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A Hollow Bomber Jacket
Last Friday, in a column about economic policy, Paul Krugman focused on "moral collapse" at the White House -- "a complete failure of purpose and loss of direction." Meanwhile, President Obama flew to Afghanistan, where he put on a leather bomber jacket and told U.S. troops: "You're achieving your objectives. You will succeed in your mission."
For the Obama presidency, moral collapse has taken on the appearance of craven clockwork, establishing a concentric pattern -- doing immense damage to economic security at home while ratcheting up warfare overseas.
By the end of the weekend, a deal was just about wrapped up between the president and Republican congressional leaders to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
On the spin-cycle agenda this month is yet more reframing of the president's foggy doubletalk about Afghanistan. Strip away the carefully crafted verbiage and the picture is stark -- with plans for a huge U.S. war effort in that country for many years to come.
At the end of a year with massive U.S. military escalation in Afghanistan, parallels with the Johnson administration's unhinged Vietnam War are hard to miss. Conjectures about an inside-the-Democratic-Party challenge to Obama's re-nomination are now moving from shadowy whispers to open discourse.
Some critics of the Vietnam War hesitated to confront it because of President Johnson's laudable domestic record, which included the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the founding of Medicare and the launching of other Great Society programs. In sharp contrast, what most distinguishes President Obama's domestic record is its series of major cave-ins to corporate power and income inequality.
Ostensibly battling for economic fairness, the president is flying a white flag high over the White House.
"The Obama administration seems to have very little concern about poor people and their social misery," former Obama supporter Cornel West pointed out during an interview on Democracy Now last month. "Look at the policies vis-à-vis Wall Street downplaying Main Street. . . . Look at the policy, the dilapidated housing. We can go right across the board. Look at the policies of the New Jim Crow system: the Prison Industrial Complex. So, we're talking not just about individual presidents, we're talking about a system that is tilted against poor people, against working people, disproportionately black and brown and red."
The tilt of that system continues to become more extreme under the shifting needs for corporate profits and an "austerity" agenda that the Obama administration has embraced under the rationale of deficit reduction. The White House plan to freeze federal workers' pay, announced in late November, is another brick in the slanted wall.
In the process, the president is implying that civil service workers are expendable. Obama drew cheers on Friday night at Bagram Air Base when he told several thousand assembled troops: "You may have noticed that during these tough budget times, I took the step of freezing pay for our federal workforce. But because of the service that you rendered, all who wear the uniform of the United States of America are exempt from that action."
Along the way, the wealthy get to keep their humongous tax cuts, and the military-industrial complex gets to keep its warfare state going full throttle.
Evidence of the Obama administration's "moral collapse" is profuse; the pattern is clear, the consequences already terrible. During the weeks and months ahead, progressives will need to engage in fresh strategic discussions. Public candor may be insufficient, but it is necessary.
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23 Comments so far
Show AllNelson Muntz said it best ...... "Ha, Haaa"
Obama had a "Mission Accomplished" moment.
if they seriously wanted to reduce the deficit they should just cancel all military expenditures.
all but support for ex-draftees.
Yet Solomon, like so many other liberals such as those who write for The Nation, believed that if enough pressure was put on Obama after he became president, then Obama would be forced to listen to the bidding of the people. That, of course, proved to be a chimera. It apparently never occurred to these liberals that instead of backing Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, they could have instead thrown their weight and their influence behind a third party progressive candidate instead of the militaristic and corporate backed Barack Obama who was the champion of the Democratic party.
Solomon and those at The Nation care about one thing: maintaining an audience while keeping their allegiance to the democratic intact. I will be very wary of anything he or his peers advocate over the next two years.
If an election were held today, they'd all be supporting democrats-despite everything that has occurred.
Which brings to mind, I wonder how many saw Michael Moore's dissing of WikiLeaks over the last few days?
If one thing good can come of this particular period, its that True Colors that are being exposed now almost on a daily basis.
Just my take.
I did not know that Michael Moore, that champion of the people, is now criticizing Wikileaks for exposing the secrets of the US war machine. If this is true, the progressives and leftists do not have to look very far to find out who their true enemies are.
"I wonder how many saw Michael Moore's dissing of WikiLeaks over the last few days?"
___________________
It's the first I've heard of it. Can you provide a source?
I just did a quick Google News search and scanned Mike's site, http://www.michaelmoore.com/ but didn't find any dissing.
I'm not exactly a big fan of Moore, but he's previously enthusiastically hailed WikiLeaks disclosures and is a member of the organization supporting Bradley Manning.
O.S.
I agree. I, also, have been highly critical of Moore but I too was unable to locate anything which said that Moore has condemned the actions of Wikileaks, Julian Assange and/or Bradley Manning.
Whoa! Really? Tell me where you found out about the Moore/Wikileaks stuff, I'm dying to read it!!!
This is all a real hoot! Obama the babbler. Lefties left in the cold. The Dems in disarray, thoroughly shellacked and not knowing where to turn.
This is a real hoot. You got laid off, your house is in forclosure, you lost your health insurance and your kid just got cancer, now the bank is repossessing your car. What a hoot!
The ideas Norman seem to be on my no fly list. That's what makes horse races
In fact I was formulating just such a list the other day-
Subject: Memory hole lane: progressive perps: #1 norm Solomon
Let's work on a hall of shame:
2006 Norman Solomon accuses Hillary of turning on the base:
Hillary Clinton's Premature Triangulation - by Norman Solomon
Two years from now, Hillary Clinton might be pleased to hear the kind of boos and antiwar chants that greeted her days ago when she spoke at the annual Take Back America conference of Democratic activists and argued against a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. But so much of politics is about timing. And right now, Clinton is facing a serious problem of premature triangulation.
As long as she needs support from Democratic primary voters, Hillary Clinton will want to defer the media rewards of an all-out "Sister Souljah moment." Let's recall that in 1992, when Bill Clinton went out of his way to denounce the then-little-known rap singer Sister Souljah at a Rainbow Coalition conference, he'd already clinched the Democratic presidential nomination and was looking toward the general election.
http://antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=9149
Obama and the Progressive Base | Scoop News
Aug 2008
Barack Obama is an extremely smart guy. And I can't remember a major contender for president less inclined to insult the intelligence of the public.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0807/S00101.htm
I just came across this list which I now remember reading. So it's plagiarism.
. . . tremendous whoring on behalf of Barack Obama so narrowing the list down to just 5 of the top whores wasn't easy. Feel free to add your own street walkers and call boys & girls posing as 'journalists' and 'critics' to the list.
1) Norman Solomon.
Alleged 'independent' media critic Normy Solomon showed his 'independence' this year by making like he was starring in the title role of Scream, Pretty Peggy! So much drama, so much bitchy, it was as though he was trying to raise Joan Crawford from the grave. Unlike most media critics, Normy decided to become a pledged delegate for his wet-dream Barack Obama. And ethics being something he'll drop quicker than his drawers, Normy frequently forgot to disclose that new status when he was brought in as an 'independent' 'critic' to comment on the 2008 Democratic Party primary race.
http://thirdestatesundayreview.blogspot.com/2008/12/2008-bronze-boobies.html
norm... for the last time, crow is not a delicacy
An article worth reading imho is Michael Lerner's op ed in the Washington Post on 12/4 calling for a primary challenge. I don't think the Democrats are likely to come up with anything worth voting for, but who knows? Here's the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120304148.html
I thought that article was downright silly. Michael Lerner seems to think that if a progressive challenges O-blah-blah in the primary, then O-blah-blah will be pushed to the left. Well sure, he'll push his rhetoric to the left, but so what? We already know that O-blah-blah is a lying double crosser.
Lerner says that if a progressive runs against O-blah-blah that we can "push" for change or that we can "call" for change or, even better, we can "call unequivocally" for change. Push? Call? Call unequivocally? What the hell does that mean?
I thought his article was dumb. Michael Lerner only speaks in meaningless abstractions and knows nothing about power and less about reality.
The only way to move the presidency to the left is to move O-blah-blah out of the white house first.
Norman Solomon is guilty of being complicit in Obama's policies.
Norman Solomon was a delegate to the DNC.
Norman Solomon attacked, often viciously, those who opposed electing Obama.
Norman Solomon should never be trusted, or listened to, again.
Now,
Norman Solomon is crying crocodile tears because he sees which way the wind is blowing.
Let's all sing a nice round chorus of Phil Och's song, dedicated to Norman, "Love Me, I'm a liberal."
Now that I'm older and Wiser
I'm gonna turn you in.
So Love me, LOVE ME love me,
I'm a liberal.
RIP Phil.
Norman WAS a supporter; but can't you HEAR the sea change in his voice and in the points raised in this article? Like David Michael Green, Dave Lindorff, and others, he's woken up! Solomon, IMO, holds truly progressive beliefs; but he felt it necessary to work within "the system." Now that his beliefs have been so seriously violated, he's responding to that betrayal.
IF enough of the disaffected were willing to band together, a true progressive congress might convene and discuss what alternatives to the deadly status quo exist.
Let's give credit where credit is due. Anyone who wakes up and begins to see through the dense din of illusion should be summoned to "our cause."
The mood has changed on C.D. During the phase prior to the election, there was a lot of cheerleading for Obama. Now that enough time has gone by to show the wolf in sheep's clothing, more and more established figures are waking up to the awful truth.
If enough not only wake up, but realize the importance of MEETING... then quite possibly a challenger from the Left will appear.
It's been said by those who have a greater recollection of history than I do, that sometimes these 3rd party forces catalyze the policies that get woven into the Democratic party's platforms. Therefore "winning" the position of power, or not winning, is not all that matters in the big game plan. A serious challenge/challenger might FORCE the established Democrats to start fighting for the rights and benefits they gave away to those who already had far more than their fair, or DESERVED, share!
If principled voices from the TRUE LEFT spoke up and exposed Obama's policies for the sell-out to corporations, including the MIC, that they are, then where would the right wing find itself? How could its lies about Obama being a socialist hold, if those who UNDERSTAND Socialism actually gained enough cred to be HEARD across major media? (Presuming that option still exists. The shut-down of Wikileaks, added to the nude airport scans, plus the disgusting Supreme Court ruling on corporate "free speech" make the prospect of another party/contender being heard by and through major outlets all the more difficult.)
I think it's fair to give credit where credit is due. I know many people who really regret voting for Obama, and they are much more politically savvy now because of it.
But Norman is different. He was out there on his pedestal pointing fingers, deriding his critics with the utmost level of liberal smuggishness, that it is nearly impossible to forget that.
Bottom line, I don't trust the guy. At all.
And, voting is a waste of time anyways. I only vote on propositions. I highly suggest that people read Chris Hedges new book, "Death of the Liberal Class." He agrees, voting is waste of time in this system, which is NOT a democracy.
It is time to build a movement outside of the political parties, from the ground, from the grassroots, with labor, with environmentalists, and it has to be radical.
Some people wake up early. Some people wake up late. Good article, Norman Solomon, even if you are a little late in recognizing that Obama is a plutocrat through and through. Better late than never. We can't all have perfect 20-20 vision right from the get-go, like some people commenting on Common Dreams claim to have.
Seriously, let's give support to people who are waking up, not grind them into the ground.
I think Solomon would still say one should vote for the Democrat in any race, because he would think it better than the Republican being elected, thinking that there is no practical alternative to the two party system. Ask him and he'll tell you: he's not shy about it. That's what I heard the last time I heard him speak.
That Bomber jacket worn by President Obama was perfect and fitted Barry to a T, except it should have had a drone bomber ensigna on it. Talk about the epitome of hypocrisy! Obama was told by EU President Rompuy that the war in Afghanistan is not winnable and most Europeans do not believe in it, yet he has the temerity to tell the troops: " you will succeed in your mission ". Sending these troops off to die and get wounded in a war he knows better than anyone that has no chance for success makes him guilty of murder and the highest treason to our troops.
"A Hollow Bomber Jacket" . . . worn by a horrifically hollow man.