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Obama Pulls a Clinton
Here we go again. When Bill Clinton
suffered an electoral reversal after his first two years in office, he
abruptly embraced the corporate money guys who had financed his
congressional opposition in an effort to purchase a second term. On
Tuesday in his Wall Street Journal Op-Ed piece, Barack Obama veered
sharply down that same course, trumpeting his executive order " ... to
remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our
economy less competitive. ..." 
He employed the same "creating a 21st-century regulatory system" rationalization used by Clinton when he signed off on the sweeping deregulation legislation that unleashed the Wall Street greed that ended up being the biggest job-killer since the Great Depression. "Over the (past) seven years, we have tried to modernize the economy," Clinton enthused as he signed the Financial Services Modernization Act that repealed key New Deal legislation, adding, "And today what we are doing is modernizing the financial services industry, tearing down those antiquated laws and granting banks significant new authority." Modernizing was the propaganda constant, as in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that Clinton signed, thus shielding financial derivatives from any government regulation.
That deregulation, as Obama concedes in his WSJ column, led to "a lack of proper oversight and transparency (that) nearly led to the collapse of the financial markets and a full-scale depression." But Obama now promises that his deregulation efforts will be more sensibly targeted and will "bring order to regulations that have become a patchwork of overlapping rules, the result of tinkering by administrations and legislatures of both parties and influence of special interests in Washington over decades."
When he wrote that he intends to accomplish this revamp "with more input from experts, businesses and ordinary citizens," did he have in mind his two new key White House advisers who were the most effective advocates for those special interests? Tom Donilon, Obama's national security adviser, was the Washington lobbyist for the housing behemoth Fannie Mae, which will cost taxpayers $700 billion because of its marketing of toxic derivatives. Obama's new Chief of Staff William Daley was the lead Washington representative for a similarly afflicted JPMorgan Chase. These are the folks, along with many other Wall Street alums in this administration, who will oversee the latest update of already weakened regulations.
The first target will be the administration's puny efforts to protect consumers: "The move is the latest effort by the White House to repair relations with corporate America," the Wall Street Journal's report on Obama's column stated, "Business leaders say an explosion in new regulations stemming from the president's health-care and financial regulatory overhauls has, along with the sluggish economy, made them reluctant to spend on expansion and hiring. Companies are sitting on nearly $2 trillion in cash and liquid assets, the most since World War II."
This is a case of corporate blackmail pure and simple. The economy is sluggish because of a housing crisis that shows no sign of improvement. It stands history on its head to blame government financial regulations that had worked splendidly for six decades for the meltdown or the failure to fix a housing market that is the key to improved consumer spending.
Fixing housing would require efforts to keep the 50 million Americans whose mortgages are underwater in their homes. But the government bailouts under both George W. Bush and Obama have not required any significant cramp-down or reappraisal of mortgages by banks to enable people to stay in their homes. Instead the Fed and Treasury have flooded the banks and top corporations with cheap money and bailouts but, in the classic problem of pushing on a string, the corporate ingrates are hoarding that money.
Obama, and the party he heads, failed to provide a progressive narrative during November's election holding the financial elite that created this mess responsible. The key issue is not big government or onerous regulation but rather transparency and fraud prevention. When you are evicted, it is a government agent, a marshal or sheriff, who will force you out, so shouldn't the government also be involved in assuring that the consumer is protected by a properly vetted contract? Instead the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spearheaded the marketing of an alternative narrative, as successful as it was devious, by Republican candidates that held regulation-rather than deregulation-responsible for the mess. Now Obama seems poised to join their ranks. As the WSJ reported:
"On Feb. 7, Mr. Obama will visit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce-a chief opponent to his administration's regulatory approach-for a discussion on how the White House can work with the group to create jobs. The efforts are designed to give companies more confidence in the president's stewardship of the economy, and bolster his re-election prospects among a wealthy constituency not traditionally allied with Democrats."
A constituency that Daley, Obama's new chief of staff, can faithfully represent, having received $5 million a year from JPMorgan Chase. And so ends the season of hope for the less wealthy constituency traditionally allied with Democrats.
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90 Comments so far
Show AllAh nuts! Tunnis anyone?
Do they still allow rackets in Tunisia, the latest Land of the Free. A Muslim country, yet. Who knew?
Go get them Bob. Have refused to lay eyes on anything out of the LA Times since you got canned. We need an FDR in these times of immeasurable trouble and we got a Clinton warmed over. God I loath the Clintons - used to be just her majesty, but now it's both.
He isn't pulling a Clinton, and neither was Clinton. They were all just continuing St. Ronnie the Asshole's deregulation. This crisis has been in play for over 30 years and it is almost accomplished.
I think this narrative - that Obama is moving rightward post mid-term elections is a dangerous one. It provides the administration cover and belies an otherwise evident truth - Obama already was significantly rightward and corporatist, now he can just be overt about it.
Similarly Clinton's colors were on display for anyone looking long before he was President. Jeffery St. Clair has an excellent article on Counterpunch detailing Clinton's long history of rolling over for corporations:
http://counterpunch.org/stclair01142011.html
Mr.Obama: for Gods sake please resign. Your killing us. Isn't it wonderful in the knowledge that you've been screwed by someone you thought was a friend? This guy makes Nixon look like a friend. This guy makes Dwight Eisenhower look like the best Democrat since FDR. I've always referred to Reagan as Ronnie The Stupid but St. Ronnie the Asshole is fantastic. Two thumbs up.
I don't know about the rest of you folks here but i'm tired of this destruction of America in slow motion. Let's just get it over with so we can start fresh. Give it to the thugs on the right and let them burn it down now. Short quick pain is prefferable to a long drawn out agonizing death. Let the crooks and the thugs really show their hand. Maybe then the lobotomized public will finally get the message. There are only three pieces of the conservative end game left to play out. Defunding of SS, destroying the public sector unions and teachers unions. They are working on all three concurrently. The unimaginable nightmare is about to unfold; a sitting Demoratic president presiding over the dismantling of Social Security. I will never vote for this spinless corporate shill again. At least with GW we knew what was coming.
Scheer writes:
"And so ends the season of hope for the less wealthy constituency traditionally allied with Democrats."
Hey Bob... you think the "season of hope" ended with Obama and the Democrats now? Jesus, have you been under a rock in Brentwood?
for the second time in two days mr sheer disbelief is on about how disappointing barry has been as president
man i ask how much is enough - that he still continues to be dizzied by this stuff makes me think he will never get it
the presidency of the united states has been occupied by one psychopath after another since day one
bush baby - clinton - bush daddy - reagan (his son now admits that dear old dad was alzheimer stricken while he was in office - boy couldn't see that one coming) - carter - ford - nixon - jfk was the exception that proved the rule and look what happened to him
how about honest abe - note to reader's - never trust a guy who calls himself honest - lincoln was a lobbyist for the railroads. lincoln was a racist and he encouraged blacks to go back to africa and he certainly did not want blacks to be living among the whites - sort of like the bush's are today
lincoln speaking to a delegation of balcks at the whitehouse in 1862: "You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races . . . . This physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both . . . and affords a reason at least why we should be separated . . . . It is better for us both, therefore, to be separate."
lincoln suspended habeus corpus, incarcerated thousands of people without due process, had citizens shot down in the streets and of course conducted the war with the south killing close to a million americans. by his own words the war was conducted not to free the slaves or end slavery but the save what he called the union.
lincoln had no problem shooting or imprisoning folks for not paying taxes and tariffs
and of course he created and then micromanaged the civil war to preserve a "union" that did not exist.
he profusely thanked and rewarded officers like Sherman and Sheridan for waging war on civilians, as they did during Sherman's March, the burning of Atlanta and Columbia, South Carolina, and the burning of the Shenandoah Valley. General Sherman wrote that Lincoln "especially enjoyed" his stories of how Southern women, children and old men were terrorized by Sherman's "bummers," as his looting, pillaging, plundering, and raping "soldiers" were called.
let's face it - presidents are psychopathic - who else would want this job
i also note that today the governor of hawaii is lamenting that though he tries and tries he still can't find barry's birth certificate anywhere
sort of like bush baby's service records
nowhere to be found...........
I have never come across any historical references (books) that Lincoln was so racist. Can you post web link here? Thanks.
just google it
you find things like this:
Lincoln on Racial Equality:
I am not now, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and the black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man.
Lincoln in his speech to Charleston, Illinois, 1858
It's complete surprise to me. It's a reversal from what I read and taught in my younger days. I knew about habrus corpus. I did follow at length on C-Spam on Lincoln and they never mentioned about his racist remarks and etc. Like you I was utterly in disbelieved, Obama turns out to be a completely idiot, Thanks
you may begin to understand how the rockefeller education system has lied and distorted all of our history - in short it is this: we have been killing peasants for hundreds of years in order to secure profits for the true owners of the corporation of amerika - the corporations
same goes for medicine where we have rockefeller doctors pissing themsleves about second hand smoke and then saying nothing about apsartame, flouride and a million other chemicals in our food and water systems that are cancer causing
that's control you can believe in brother
Civil War historian James M. McPherson comments on Lerone Bennett's book, Lincoln the Devil:
"He [Lincoln] did support the idea of colonizing blacks abroad -- though, contrary to Bennett, he retreated from this notion after 1862 and moved toward a policy of assimilating the four million freed slaves as equal citizens. Lincoln did lag behind the abolitionists and the radical wing of his own party in supporting Emancipation and the enlistment of black soldiers.
[snip]
Bennett never acknowledges that Lincoln was ''sensitive to the wrongs of the Negroes.'' Abundant evidence of such sensitivity is conspicuously missing from the book. Also missing is any appreciation of Lincoln's stand against the expansion of slavery. Because the Constitution prohibited interference with slavery in states where it existed, Lincoln and other Republicans focused on the question of slavery in the territories, where they insisted that Congress had the constitutional power to ban it. In his famous House Divided speech of 1858, Lincoln said that Republicans intended to ''arrest the further spread'' of slavery and thus place the institution ''in course of ultimate extinction.''
[snip]
By then, Lincoln had long since abandoned his ''dream'' of colonizing blacks abroad, or what Bennett insists on calling ''deportation'' even though, as Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles noted in 1862, ''the President objected unequivocally to compulsion. Their emigration must be voluntary and without expense to themselves.'' Nor were Lincoln's motives as sinister as Bennett suggests. In 1862 the president told a black delegation, ''Your race are suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people.'' The legacy of that wrong in the form of discrimination, Lincoln feared, would long prevent them ''from being placed on an equality with the white race.'' If Lincoln still believed in 1865 that to get ahead, blacks would have to get out of the United States, he was no longer saying so. Bennett nevertheless insists that ''deportation'' was ''the only racial solution he ever had. . . . Racial cleansing became, 72 years before the Third Reich, 133 years before Bosnia, the official policy of the United States.'' Here we have Bennett's conclusion: Abraham Lincoln was no better than Adolf Hitler.
There is, of course, no doubt that Lincoln shared many of the racist convictions of his time. But while he was not a radical abolitionist, he did consider slavery morally wrong, and seized the opportunity presented by the war to move against it. Bennett fails to appreciate the acuity and empathy that enabled Lincoln to transcend his prejudices and to preside over the greatest social revolution in American history, the liberation of four million slaves."
during the last few reagan years my favorite thing to do was watch one of his press conferences!
the guy was obviously addled!
In 1986, following a particularly invasive session of oral surgery, I had the pleasure of watching a Raygun speech after ingesting Vicodin.
Aside from Belushi joining Joe Cocker onstage on SNL, it remains the most hilarious thing I've ever seen on the TV machine.
While I understand the point you are trying to make that Lincoln was racist and a tyrant, I believe that you have misjudged the political climate he was working in. The nation was in civil war and 1862, the year of the quoted speech, was the darkest year of the war. Lincoln did suspend Habeas Corpus, but he was not the first of last to do so. Most wars Americans have fought have resulted in the suspension of this rule, including World War II. Lincoln created these racist remarks in this speech because he was tasked with the mission of keeping the remaining polarized states of the Union from seceding and joining the Confederacy. Most strategic of all was Maryland; if Maryland had seceded, what would have become of D.C? In times of crisis, politics is less about trouncing upon the opponent and more about keeping unity. As the saying goes,"Together we stand, divided we fall." So yes, the Emancipation Proclamation was more a strategic rather than social document of liberty but his attempt at Reconstruction shows a Lincoln bent on progressing America to the next level of social equality from the ashes of the Civil War.
Medmedude is giving the Confederate, Southern apologist, libertarian, right wing revised history of Lincoln. These views are very popular amongst the Dixiecrats and neo-confederate types, for the most part but with a few exceptions. Lincoln would certainly be racist by today's standards but give the man some credit, he was vehemently opposed to slavery and he is on record as being opposed to slavery, it wasn't just a political ploy or his supposed racism. He genuinely despised slavery. He was operating in a highly racist, polarized atmosphere, to even talk about abolition was highly incendiary. He could have just punted the issue like Buchanan. Lincoln evolved on the issue of colonization or sending the slaves back to Africa. He changed on this issue and accepted that African Americans wanted to stay in America. Lincoln opposed the Mexican-American war, he said that it would set a bad precedent and that it was a war of choice.
Lincoln was within his bounds to suspend habeas corpus since there was an actual insurrection/rebellion going on. Right wing libertarians, like Fox News's Judge Napolitano, certainly portray Lincoln as a tyrant. The black historian, Lerone Bennett Jr., not a right winger, despises Lincoln and portrays him as a loathsome, insincere racist pig.
I hope Medmedude is not a birther and was joking about Obama's birth certificate. This birther nonsense is just so much bogus horse sh*t.
Harry Truman would be regarded as a racist by today's standards but he did have the courage and decency to desegregate the army; he could have easily passed that hot potato on to the next president.
Your article reads like the birthplace of all things evil.
Exactly what I was thinking. Is it really possible to be surprised and indignant about Obama at this point? I mean, the first 6 months I can understand, but now??
It's a sign of how deeply brainwashed liberal journalists are in this culture. They still believe we live in a "Democracy" instead of a inverted totalitarian corporate state, of which Obama is the public face for their rapacious violence and exploitation around the world.
I'm surprised by the number of people who jump on the messenger. Mr. Scheer is merely pointing out a recent event - Obama's announcement, “to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive," and the dire implications on the middle class. He also discusses the conflict of his recent chief of staff appointment, William Daley. Personally, I find Mr. Scheer to be one of the more astute journalists around today and certainly not brainwashed. He has a litany of articles critical of Obama and his administration and why would his indignation cease as long as these specious pronouncements roll out?
In placing blame for the descent of this country, I would place more on the Democrats than the Republicans. Republicans have always been for deregulation, privatization, and for toleration of corporate abuse. The Democrats adopted those positions since the seventies, thereby eliminating any choice in our elections. It's time for the Dems to go down even further than they are now. I hope for an Obama defeat in 2012, though I cannot find a Rethug opponent that could beat him. A sorry state of affairs.
As Jack Rasmus told us on December 23, its now one party called the Repo-Demo Party and you best forget that TR, FDR, JFK, MLK, RFK and other populists ever existed as you watch Obama continue his Herbert Hoover and Ronny Raygun on steroids play.
The corporate 'mainstream' media already have the official narrative in place for their post 2012 presidential analysis:
If Obama wins in 2012 they will announce that is because he wisely listened to American voters and moved to the political center (their code for moving to the 'right').
If Obama loses the 2012 election then they will tut-tut that it was because he was too liberal for the American voter and did not move far enough to the 'center'.
You can bank on this narrative. It's a version of 'heads I win, tails you lose'.
RANDY G: Right on!
The fleecing of America will leave nothing but an empty carcass in its wake.
Unbelievable how these cons invert dialog to protect their own rapacious schemes driven by insatiable greed and a HATRED of all living things, starting with policies of unapologetic ecocide. Meanwhile Earth Mother obviously reverberates in expressions of overt overkill. But no, they will not change course until the last creature writhes in agony, the last drop of water lays tainted in chemicals.
How can thinking persons think so wrongly?
duplicate post
drosera
Do you really loath Obama that much and why? Too bad his crocodile’s tears just won him a few more points on the polls and gonna have him around for six more years. Including Obamacare you rave so much in another CD article. Hope you or your immediately family don't get seriously ill and discover you can never trust a compulsive liar, no matter how good it look or sound!
"Me think you tok with fork tongue"
I never said "Obamacare" is a system worth preserving. I only said it is better than what we had before. It does, after all, include more people under Medicaid.
No, no, no it better not to have Obamacare. It's unsustainable, as long it's for profit. You can never trust a compulsive liar: It may look good, smell good but, it's useless as many still cannot access it, one way or another. Once enacted it's hard to change or remove it. Have you forgotten Obama twin Dubya's tax-cut? When will be the final sunset date?
Try to explain your point of view to someone who has had their insurance cut off because of a pre-existing condition, who has maxed out on benefits, who has no insurance after college and is no longer able to stay on his/her parents' plan, who makes too much for Medicaid but is too poor to buy insurance, who has reached the "doughnut hole" in prescription benefits and can't pay for medicine...and on and on. No, the healthcare package offers some benefits to those who need them. It does not help everyone and it does nothing to reduce costs. Don't get me wrong: I favor Medicare for all. But I would not stand back while Republicans take away the meager advances Congress passed. Would you? Would you deprive those receiving increased benefits of what they have just gotten? I doubt it.
That bill, in my opinion, completely destroyed any chance of single payer, or "Medicare for all".
No cost controls as you point out, means of course, that in 2014, insurance rates will be even more sky-high, as evidenced by Anthem Blue Cross's just announced rate hikes in California. Since insurance, will be much higher in 2014, and again, with no direct cost controls other than taxing so-called "Cadillac plans", the public mandate to purchase such overpriced insurance is even more insidious. The subsidies, that some Americans will qualify for, end up being subsidies directly to the big insurance companies. Those Americans that can't qualify for any subsidy, but who can only afford the worst coverage with the highest deductibles, will likely end up with an insurance policy they really can't afford to use, but the other alternative would be to get a notice to pay the federal government a fine through the IRS.
The CBO estimates that by 2019, 23 Million Americans will STILL be uninsured. I wonder what insurance premiums will be in 2019.
For all of the positives you list, most insurance companies will simply solve the problem for them of insuring those with "pre-exisiting conditions" by simply pricing them out of coverage, or simply dropping such coverage, as some have already done with insurance policies covering children.
Any system, incrementally "improved", or not, that leaves a system in place that considers whether someone is "covered" or not, is just cruel.
Excellent rebuttal, I could never explain so it well. If anyone thinks the Congress will/may amends the bill to single payer, they are only dreaming. It may take years or never and all the while the insurance company racking billions. With the billions they could easily replace Insurance friendly candidates of their choice.
Education and Healthcare should not be for profits.
The U.S. has a de facto One Party State.
Ominously, one wing of the party pushes ever farther to the political right -- unfettered military spending & empire; erosion of the Bill of Rights, acceptance of torture, widespread surveillance; unregulated corporate power, 'financialization' of the economy, ever greater concentrations of wealth, etc.
And the other wing dutifully tries to keep pace while offering symbolic talking points on 'hope and change', corporate responsibility, etc.
Either our political class has reached this consensus because these collective policies are the only reasonable ones for our nation-- or they have reached this relentless uniformity of policy because no other options are permitted.
If the first case, then most posters at CD are naive whiners who don't appreciate just how thoughtful, intelligent, sincere, and far-sighted our political/corporate leaders really are...
...or we are living under a political/economic system that is no longer receptive to course changes. (In political science terminology this is known as sailing up shit creek without a paddle.)
If Obama and John Boehner and Goldman Sachs & the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are all on the same page, then who are we to doubt their wisdom?
Don't forget to add Dick Cheney to your list.
...so the reason consumers aren't spending is because the housing market needs to be fixed? So, I guess re-inflating the housing bubble will solve all this?
yikes....
It's an inappropriate metaphor to call it a corporate kidnapping because there is no ransom and Obama is certainly not the agent who, acting on our behalf, is attempting to free us. Obama, like Clinton, is bowing before what he sees as the unassailable power of corporate interests and money and hoping he can get on the good side of those corporate forces who will fund his reelection. In a political system as corrupt as ours it's a winning strategy.
>Obama...is bowing before what he sees as the unassailable power of corporate interests and money<
Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you said, but the way I see it Obama bowed before corporate interests from the very moment he chose his cabinet. I knew then that he would be NO friend to anyone from the middle class on down. He was and is, regrettably, nothing more than a brand.
As someone who put in time in advertising (as a graphic production worker, rather than as a planner), I discovered what a brand is. It's a fairy tale whipped up by a corporation to lull us into buying their product.
Obama was the product the corporations wanted us to buy. (If they hadn't wanted him, the McCain/Palin ticket made no sense at all.) So, first I felt the thrill of thinking "my candidate" had won; and very shortly thereafter, the chill of realizing he had never been my candidate at all.
I voted for him, but I will never vote for him again. If there is no one I can vote for (Family party, Green Party, etc), I won't vote. My family voted Democrat for generations, but the party we voted for no longer exists.
You're right he's always been a corporate whore but in 2008, when he decided not to have a publicly funded campaign many of us bought into that decision to take corporate money, particularly from the financial sector, as a necessary evil. Two years later the red light is on in the oval office, shining out for all those out on K street to see and soon we will see him advertising specials on deregulation and tax evasion. We should have seen it from the start. Now that he has shown his true colors I ask if there is any Democrat left with the integrity to challenge him in the 2012 primaries. If not our efforts should go to a third party candidate.
We were told the taxpayer funded bank bailouts were necessary because their deregulation caused the collapse. (Of course no serious regulations were put into place, let alone pushed for by Obama.) Now we are told that the problem is too much regulation by Obama. Our media is as good at the flip-flops as is our President.
Regulations are to blame for business's reluctance to hire more workers? Gee, and here I thought it had something to do with 17% un- (and under-) employment, and a lack of demand caused by a middle class just having been fleeced for thirty years or so. But I guess I'm just naive.
I don't think "pulled a Clinton" is appropriate for now, perhaps on inauguration day he "pulled a Clinton." Now it is more like Obama pulled a Reagan. We worked to elect a President who is now worried about justice for saccharin?
I think the season of hope ended when it was obvious he was in the pockets of the medical insurance companies during the health care debate, so there is little surprise that he is now into every deep pocket. It will take at least a billion to get reelected now.
It will work out for him though. Only the Democrats in the Senate will get a "shellacking" in 2012 and then he have his own kind in both house.
He pulled a Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Hoover.
"the Democrats in the Senate will get a "shellacking" in 2012 and then he have his own kind in both house."
The plan all along, with Obama in full cooperation.
They have us between a rock and a hard place. The rock is the duopoly, the hard place is the voters' intelligence and will, or lack thereof.
And to think there are probably scores of people who will still vote for this empty suit in 2012. Mr. Scheer is probably one of them.
Yeah, because things would REALLY be different if we elected who ever you thought would be best.
This is the major problem with the left, including myself in past years. Most of us have no idea how Government works. We have an idea of how we would like it to work. But we always say silly things like Obama did this, or Bush did that, or Clinton did this.
We never lay blame where it belongs, and we fall into the same trap as everyone else, thinking the Pres. can do all things good or bad on his or her own.
It doesn't work that way. And that is why people don't take us serious.
Sorry I have to disagree somewhat with your comments. I know its the "system" that is rotten to the core. However, W came into power and bullied his disastrous policies thru with pure aggressiveness. And he succeeded. Are you telling me that we can't have a Progressive do the same? Obama is the absolutely the worst President this country could have elected at this point in our country's history. If we had a person of conviction, with drive, and a take no prisoners' approach, I am convinced the dial would have swung to the left. Just imagine a "true" leader rallying the nation around a "public option" in healthcare. The nation was ripe for it........it would have passed if a full court press by the President occurred.
Instead the country elected a shallow man, beholden to his masters (an they're not the American people.).
We know exactly how government works: $$$$$$$$$$$
We just don't have any extra. The people are fighting a war against a tiny but very, very well armed enemy. And we're losing.
"Propaganda is to (so-called) democracy what violence is to totalitarianism."
The people are simple-minded; there are always abundant opportunities for demagogues and scoundrels.
I disagree.
Most of the commenters here clearly understand that there are structural and collective forces responsible for the rigged system, and that these forces override and largely control the individual actors, or players.
But even if individual players only have nominal power to influence events, that's no reason to overlook them or give them a pass when they buy into the nefarious schemes and propagate the myths of the power elite as Obama does.
It's possible to recognize that even the highest-profile officials are pawns or cogs in a complex and shadowy system of authoritarian control and still hold the officials responsible for facilitating rather than opposing the dark forces.
You're basically arguing that "all cats are grey in the dark", and implying that a president's conduct is absolutely and irrevocably determined by forces beyond his/her control. But in fact, some cats behave better than others-- and are appropriately called out and criticized for egregiously misbehaving.
I'm not sure who isn't taking us "serious"-- the unreflective, complacent yahoos gearing up for the Super Bowl? The corporate media commentariat? C'est la vie.
Mr. Scheer it is common political lore that Clinton came to understand how the "world" worked in 1993 right after he came into office and his agenda was supposedly stymied by the bond traders who he then learned controlled the American economy.
Now if that is the case - and the above incident has been widely reported and documented - then why should we not see every political act by a Democrat since that day in 1993 as a capitulation to the financial sector?
Even if you believe Clinton had no idea of how the world worked - which is a highly suspect story in its own right - then after that story was reported in 1993 it should have been clear what kind of government any politician - Democrat or Republican - was going to lead, right?
Quit reporting on the latest moves of the DC puppet show as if they actually meant anything to anyone outside of the Beltway.
Until you start explicitly stating that we live in a one-party fascist state the snickers and gasps at Georgetown cocktail parties over the latest political gambits/kabuki don't qualify as column-worthy material.
OilyBomber choose fascism with his telecom vote and bankers with his first appointments.
The only news is how creative he is at expodentially creating misery i.e. Soon to be gutted SS, ( through 2% tax reduction).
Glenn Ford, you are absolutely right. OilyBomber (love that name) could have easily dropped the income tax rate by 2% if he was just trying to stimulate the economy.
He has just grabbed the third rail and he's not been burned. Let's fire this asshole up with massive demonstrations after the State of the Union address when he calls for "shared sacrifice" by further cutting Social Security.