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Obama by Default
The Republicans are a sick joke, and their narrow ideological stupidity has left rational voters no choice in the coming presidential election but Barack Obama. With Ron Paul out of it and warmongering hedge fund hustler Mitt Romney the likely Republican nominee, the GOP has defined itself indelibly as the party of moneyed greed and unfettered imperialism.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. (AP/Charles Dharapak)
It is with chilling certainty that one can predict that a single Romney appointee to the Supreme Court would seal the coup of the 1 percent that already is well on its way toward purchasing the nation’s political soul. Romney is the quintessential Citizens United super PAC candidate, a man who has turned avarice into virtue and comes to us now as a once-moderate politician transformed into the ultimate prophet of imperial hubris, blaming everyone from the Chinese to laid-off American workers for our problems. Everyone, that is, except the Wall Street-dominated GOP, which midwifed the Great Recession under George W. Bush and now seeks to blame Obama for the enormous deficit spawned by the party’s wanton behavior.
Without a militarily sophisticated enemy anywhere on the planet, the United States, thanks to the Bush-bloated budget, now spends almost as much on defense as the rest of the world combined. Yet the GOP honchos dare claim they are for small government even as their chosen candidate chomps at the bit to go to war with Iran.
They obviously learned nothing from the disasters of Bush the Second, who hijacked the tragedy of 9/11 to launch the most wasteful orgy of military spending in U.S. history in his failed effort to take out an al-Qaida enemy that had no significant military arsenal. That enemy was later eliminated by Obama, whom the Republicans still obstinately refuse to credit for accomplishing what Bush failed to. Can you imagine the explosion of preening self-congratulation that would have resulted if a GOP president had done the deed?
The red-ink deficits that had been stanched under Bill Clinton came to gush uncontrollably because of the swollen military budgets, compounded by the severe costs of the recession that occurred on Bush’s watch.
But the Republicans refuse to take ownership of the collapse resulting from their longstanding advocacy of radical financial deregulation that led to the derivatives bubble, hundreds of trillions of dollars of toxic junk, now a permanent, nightmarish feature of the world’s economy. Romney, who made his fortune through such financial finagling, even has the effrontery to call for more of the same and blame Obama’s tepid efforts at establishing some sane speed limits for the financial highway as a cause of our ongoing crisis.
So insanely gullible are Republican voters that they buy Mitt’s line that bailing out the auto industry to save the heart of America’s legendary industrial base was an example of big-government waste. Yet to them the almost unimaginable sum spent on the Wall Street bailout represents prudent small-government fiscal responsibility.
The incumbent president has his failings, but compared to Mitt Romney he is a paradigm of considered and compassionate thought. As Obama put it in a speech before a journalism group this week, we are saddled with a national debt “that has grown over the last decade, primarily as a result of two wars, two massive tax cuts, and an unprecedented financial crisis, [and] that will have to be paid down.” But instead of dealing with the causes of that debt, Romney has called for an increase in military spending, continued tax breaks for the rich and reversal of the very limited restraints on corporate greed that Obama managed to get through Congress. He has endorsed the House-passed Paul Ryan budget, which, as Obama noted, even Newt Gingrich once derided as “radical” and an effort at “right-wing social engineering.”
Such radicalism leaves Obama as the “moderate” choice in the coming election, defending centrist programs that Republicans in the past helped originate. Indeed, the big attack on Obama will involve what the Republicans call Obamacare—which was modeled in every important respect on Romneycare, enacted when the GOP candidate was governor of Massachusetts.
The overarching lesson of this primary season is that Romney and the Republicans he seeks to win over are incapable of embracing the very moderation that, particularly in the golden era of Dwight Eisenhower, defined the party. Instead, they are now a reckless force bent on destroying the essential social contract that has been the basis of America’s economic and social progress.
As Obama said Tuesday in addressing the editors and reporters: “... We’re going to have to answer a central question as a nation. ... Can we succeed as a country where a shrinking number of people do exceedingly well, while a growing number struggle to get by? ... This is not just another run-of-the-mill political debate. ... It’s the defining issue of our time.”
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197 Comments so far
Show AllDamn Siouxrose, didn't know my spelling was so bad that "my mark" could be spotted on hydrants everywhere. I'll have to work on that.
As for "Muyrexen" and his, or her, spelling of "Gospel's" I would have done it the same way, so, yeah, you would have got me on that one to.
Anyway, my name "is" Zupan, that's not a screen name. So if you see me ranting about something at four in the morning again (I tend to do that sometimes) you feel free to correct my grammar anytime.
And maybe one day...I'll be able to post some long drawn out bullshit...just as good as you.
Have a good one Siouxrose.
The more I have voted for the "lesser of evils" the worse the result. In addition to repealing Glass-Steagall, there is his passing of NAFTA and the Salvage Rider law. He was responsible for more environmental degradation that Reagan and Bush I combined. Now, Nixon would be a distinct improvement over Obama as, at least arguably would McCain.
Voting for the lesser of evils simply does not work. The only way ahead would be to not do it - to vote for people, like Rocky Anderson, whose proposals we agree with and whose histories seem consistent. Vote for who we want is the only way to eventually get it by not letting the corrupt Democratic simply use and abuse us without sanction.
This article is more Scheer idiocy.
This article is more Scheer idiocy.
I've been active in politics since the late 1960,s. And the case made by Sheer has been made by 'don't rock the boat' establishment do-nothings (who all, coincidentally, benefit from the status quo) since that time.
They have prevailed during every election cycle. Left of centers support the "lesser-evil" candidate. It never matters much which candidate wins, the corporate elite win either way. The people and the planet continue to edge steadily closer to the precipice.
Elections are rigged. They're a magnet that sucks the life blood out of movement struggles. They are nothing but theatre, the contemporary version of the slave v the lion, the bull v the bullfighter. The outcome is preordained.
We, the people will continue to be consumed by lions and savaged by spears until we use our creativity, our commitment and our numbers to confront the corporate capitalist beast that threatens us all.
Don't mourn the mess we're in. We don't have to settle for evil. ORGANIZE.
Voting for Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party!
When Malcolm X spoke of liberals and conservatives, comparing them to foxes and wolves. Malcolm said that he’d rather face a wolf than a “smiling fox,” because with a wolf, at least, you always know where you stand.
Democrats = Smiling Fox
Democrats = Republicans
Real Change = Voting for someone other than a Democrat or Republican
compared to mitt romney he's mitt romney. he's a sociopathic mass murderer, war monger, corporate and imperial ideologue.
This is a significant article by Mr Scheer. He has finally succeeded in making himself irrelevant. I know I won't bother reading him ever again.
What condescending bullshit. "...rational voters no choice....but Obama."
Why not just call us "effing retards" if we don't support him.
I've studied the candidates. I have made a rational decision to support Dr Jill Stein for President. She actually has policy positions I agree with. Seems rational to me. Voting is a choice. Why not choose what you want? Of course we will be inundated by this LOTE argument from now 'til November. I'm sick of LOTE voting and for the most rational of reasons: IT DOESN'T WORK.
You vote for Obama, fool! Never again!
Welcome home, Mordechai! The forum can sure use ample doses of your wry wit! And Happy full moon... in Libra, where the scales of justice are intended to balance.
Hey American exceptionalist center right "liberals," who killed more children Timothy McVeigh or Oily Bomber? Why are you making excuses for someone who is a worse predator than any militia guy who you loath?
THINK before you answer...
We need to crawl back and vote for Obama, like an abused wife who pretends that that gash on her head, broken ribs, and bleeding mouth happened when she absent-mindedly walked into a door? I don't think so.
Staying home doesn't send a message, but voting third party does. It's way past time to stop playing the "lesser of two evils" game.
Scheer is a shill for the Democrats, who also happen to be the Republicans, and that's why we are going to see hundreds of essays like this until the election is finally over.
The Republicans will collaborate with the Democrats to destroy us. The Democrats are collaborating with the Republicans to destroy us. Vote for someone else.
As I look back on the recent acts by the planet's #1 Outlaw State, it seems clear the D and R patries will merge as one by 2020, which is to say the D's will continue to move Regressively, Relentlessly Rightward, while the Rs can't go much farther Right before they must embrace full blown Totalitarianism, which they will by 2016 if the recent 20-year trend continues. And pundits like Sheer are assisting the trend by doing nothing to buck it; rather, they go along with it by saying--as here--that there's no other choice. I'm sure that as the good liberal he perceives himself as, Sheer would be shocked to be accused of abetting the slide to Totalitarianism, and the shock would merely serve to prove his willful blindness, which is so readily on display in this absolutely worthless essay.
Actually, Karlof, your prediction about 2020 is OFF. And I will explain why.
There is a very close pragmatic resonance between the function of Jupiter and the thesis of the New Testament, and it runs parallel with an equal metaphysical equivalence set between Saturn and the Old Testament.
Jupiter represents faith and the idea that positive thinking can generate results. (It rules the sign of Sagittarius, the sign astrologers link with religion, philosophy, law, and academe.)
In contrast, Saturn represents not only fear, but also all of the conservative creeds that mostly gravitate around two key dynamics: 1. That there are cycles of gain and loss, and one must "put aside grain for the lean years" and 2. That we reap what we sow, i.e. the metrics of the Law of Karma. Saturn signifies established bodies of power, and the old patriarchal forms of rule.
Jupiter's orbit is 12 years, and Saturn's is 28.5. They meet once every 20 years. Since 1860, every one of those once-in-twenty year "Great Conjunctions" has taken place in an earth sign. Since this pair represents the "law and order" duo, the fact that their congresses have taken place almost exclusively in EARTH signs explains why law itself has leaned so heavily on property and property rights.
The year 2020 is the next "Great Conjunction" and it will take place at the cusp of Aquarius, the sign that genuinely factors the Greater Good into play. Aquarius is an air sign, and ruled by the maverick planet, Uranus. That's the planet associated with revolution, radicals, rebels, free thinkers, inventors, and innovative persons.
This is one reason why I've been stating for some time (in this forum) that I believe 2020 will prove the year that furnishes a GLOBAL constitution where basic human rights are protected, along with the rights of Mother Earth and the ecosystems necessary for our survival (as derived from the work of Evo Morales and others).
It may be 8 years of purgatory getting there... but I think it's useful to understand the HIGHER dynamics at work, and recognize that there IS light in this mortal tunnel.
Well Siouxrose, before any "global constitution" has a chance of being enacted, the Planet's #1 Outlaw State will have to be arrested, as in completely stopped in its quest to control the planet and to turn its citizens into subjects. And I do not see the required countervailing power and associated world events to arrest that process rising prior to 2020. Unfortunately, the one thing Sheer is correct about is Obama's continuance as elected dictator. And I do not have any faith in the rising of the populous to defend its rapidly eroding rights, or to abandon the two totalitarian seeking political parties. Of course, time may well prove me wrong. I'll just have to do my best to survive and elude the grasp of the State.
I appreciate your candor. Do you think, as but one telling example, that the people heading off to market the fateful day the volcano spewed over Palermo knew it would mean their last breaths taken? How about those vacationing in Southern Thailand when that big tsunami hit? My point, Karlof, is that NATURE is accelerating in a battery of unprecedented changes; and yet we almost never see these interface with political calculations or similar predictions.
Suppose a gigantic solar storm sends energy waves sufficient to take down "The Grid"? U.S. military hegemony would alter as a result.
Variables that may upset the Empire include, but are not limited to:
1. Climate change
2. OWS catching so much global fever as to mean millions upon millions rise up against The Machine
3. War in Iran and oil prices toss trade systems asunder
4. The decimation of the U.S. dollar
5. A genuine attack on the homeland (this time, no "boy who cried wolf"_
6. Divine Intervention
7. Other
8 years is a LONG time given the way events appear to be speeding up. If we live long enough and still have air (the methane issue...) to breathe, and IF CD is still up and running, we'll decide at the 2020 "finish line" which prognosticator came closer to the truth. Mr. History, with the witness of the past as prologue, or the resident mystic. Deal? Loser pays for drinks...
The aging process accelerates the passage of time; so, 8 years will go by much quicker in our mind's-eye than the previous 8. I didn't ennumerate the additional factors that might provide the necessarily additional countervailing power as you did, but your list anticipates a few of my expectations. I see no requirement that CD remain viable for the wager you suggest if you were to take my whole moniker and add at actionnet.net we will be able to communicate.
Or you could google my name... so long as the Internet holds, and those of us active on this site don't end up in any internment camps. Given the pace of "dear leaders" copying the fascist tactics of previous regimes, that outcome cannot be ruled out.
A global constitution ie another layer of bureaucracy alienated from ecological and social conditions of the people they rule over, great idea! Not!
My prediction is anglo American empire will disintegrate long before 2020 from peak oil, imperial over extension financial malfeasance climate change, leading to more governing units around the globe, and more positive diversity not fewer under some bureaucratic deadening monotonous globalist sameness.
An enlightened respect for Universal law is hardly tantamount to some trite notion of sameness. To a libertarian, anything that seems to come from outside the mandate of personal free enterprise perhaps qualifies as thus. It's really the difference between self-centered, adolescent, ego-based, climate-destroying cultures, and those that witness the integral Web of Life. THEY will outnumber the former, and law based mostly on martial muscle will no longer be the rule across this globe.
I am anarchist and co-op supporter who sees a better friend in Libertarians than apologists for state crimes on the progressive pseudo "left," which is really center right by the standards of other western democracies with more diversity of options. No doubt this too fine a distinction for you to easily grasp but I shall throw it out there anyway. Do you understand that it is the state through things like raw milk raids, intellectual property laws that protect Monsatano and Microsoft, ag subsidies, licensing fees, etc, that cause small owner operator local organic farms, and CSAs to fail?
As for the integral web of life I have spent time in a tree sit in a rope net at 150 feet above the ground, locked down UNDER a logging road, have been arrested with Earth First! and Foods Not Bombs for non violent civil disobedience. What have you actually DONE to help save the "web of lif," from state capitalist predation, stared into a crystal, and then disrespected both traditional eastern and Native American belief systems by saying OM, then Mitakuye Oyasin? You realize that does NOTHING to actually stop the earth rapers actions don't you? So since you don't know me perhaps you would be better served by checking you ASSumptions at the door, mmmK?
As for "universal law," universal means everyone obeys it, ie they engage in the same behavior, thus reducing room for experimentation to deal with our serious problems, where in a more diverse and LOCAL system some communities may choose state socialist approaches, some left anarchism, and other others a true non statist free market including barter and other direct humane face to fact exchange systems. Lets try ALL of the above and see which does best rather than ASSuming one person or a small group of people are wise enough to derive universal laws applicable to 6 billion people in many different cultures and eco-systems. Hugo Chavez gets this already for example in encouraging BOTH socialist reform in society and Truque (do a google search) free market barter trade allowing for local non statist currencies to be used that is a true free market and more Austrian economics than U.S. state capitalism. And yes my smart Ron Paul supprting friends DO realize that, and praise Chavez for his efforts in that regard. A true free market is NOT state capitalist corporatism, it is people selling jam by the side of the road, flea markets, thrift stores, co-ops, Craigslist.
See how evil and right wing I am holding Hugo Chavez and Bolivaranism up as a positive example? Try thinking outside your cloistered New Age box sometime, you might find it refreshing.
Sigh!
Wow! Bet Uranus. How about the winning Lotto number? Just kidding... Loveya SR
Good analysis, I concur.
Face it, voting for a Third Party is a complete waste. The results will never even make it to a single media outlet.
We need to vote for the Worse of the two evils, not the lesser. Only when some true right-wing extremist like Santorum gets elected will things get SO bad that the drift to fascism will be fully exposed and revolted against.
Yeah. Another Holocaust might do the trick
kane! Do you really want to vote for someone whose name means "asshole" in Latin?
Can't add much to the vast preponderance of comments that appropriately eviscerate Scheer's doomed and bankrupt lesser-evil progressive-liberalism. "Sick joke" indeed.
Unfortunately, this is the quintessential CD-promoted article of the year. It could be published here every day until the electoral farce reaches its empty climax on Erection Day.
And it will be, more or less, albeit under various other names and guises. This ought to cheer up the benighted minority of Sensible lesser-evil moderates resolved to defend the indefensible.
I was going to jump all over the line: "Everyone, that is, except the Wall Street-dominated GOP, which midwifed the Great Recession under George W. Bush and now seeks to blame Obama for the enormous deficit spawned by the party’s wanton behavior." ... But a number of you beat me to it. Something that I'm quite pleased to see. It's VERY nice to see the obama kool-aid is wearing off.
Any of you long-timers remember what it was like around CD in 2008? Just how much sunshine and unicorns bullshit was peddled by the Democratic party? It was nauseating. Anyone who dared question Obama's agenda was viciously attacked.
In 2008, there were numerous people favoring Clinton, while many of us opined she'd be worse than Obama. Well, given their behaviors to-date, it's very hard to say if Clinton would indeed have been worse--on the issues of war and rights, she would likely be worse, and there's no way universal healthcare would have been hepled given her previous conduct in the 1990s. In fencing with Republicans, Clinton would probably have been more vicious. But with Clinton as president, we would be facing similar problems with her being the first female president as we are with Obama being the first supposedly Black president. Our household voted for McKinney. So far this year, we're undecided, aside form being against Obama and whomever the GOP nominates. Somehow I don't think things will be as contentious here at CD since ObamaBush is rightly highly despised to the point where anybody writing in his support will quickly and correctly be seen as abetting continual war on Muslims and depriving rights of Americans while providing the Money Power with yet more of both money and power. Is Biden worse than Obama? Maybe we'll get lucky and get the opportunity to find out.
Is Chomsky also going to suggest we vote for Obama again this time around?
I'm just waiting for it..
Chomsky endorsed Cynthia McKinney.
Chomsky in 2008:
“I would suggest voting against McCain, which means voting for Obama without illusions.”
http://www.jillstein.org/chomsky
Mr Scheer may well be right about the need to vote for Mr Obama, but it's rather like choosing between being shot or hung - or between Alfred Hugenberg and that other fellow in 1933. At what point do Americans get to vote for a candidate who will actually do something about the 1%?
Or as my father used to ask, "if you were in a barrel of feces up to your neck and someone threw a pail of urine at you - would you duck?"
"At what point do Americans get to vote for a candidate who will actually do something about the 1%?"
Americans have had that choice in election after election. For example I voted for Mckinney in '08 and Nader in "04 and '00. Voting is like eating here. The vast majority of Americans eat really bad food. Very few follow a truly healthy diet because they don't see healthy food advertised nearly as much as Doritos, Snickers, Kraft Mac & Cheese, etc. Same with voting. All they know is D&R.
Good analogy!!
Good analogy. Very apt for America.
Noooo. Obomba sucks and all dems are evil and I'm voting third party and I don't care if the Republicans win because they're no different and Scheer is a demorat apologist and the lesser evil is still evil and, and... did I forget anything? Oh yeah, the liberals did this to us...
It is a testament to the utter bankruptcy of liberalism and the Demorats that your attempt at sarcasm reads as basic truth. Think about that.
i forgot to say, Vote Republican.
"...did I forget anything?" Yes,you forgot to think.Then again,maybe you WERE thinking and that's the best you can do.
I'd like to point out that it is a plurality of votes that win elections in this country.
Let's say there's 180 million eligible voters, and maybe 100 million registered.
About two thirds of those registered actually vote, and, of them, around 30% are hard-core repubs, and 30% dems. This is why they all want to capture the "middle".
If there are third party candidates involved, it is possible to win the presidency with well under half of the electorate. Just ask Bill Clinton, who never won with a majority of voters (thanks to Ross Perot).
My point is that there are about 5 million people who decide the election, out of 180 million possible voters. It's really a little pathetic.
I think voting third party is a civic duty. IMHO
the problem will Never be solved with the republican or democratic choices.....
these articles that pretend otherwise are frankly suspect.......
then add in the source - the SF Chronicle - and you've got the perfect example of the entrenched democratic 1% power....
Sorry but the 1%er's - even those in the democratic party ARE THE PROBLEM
so once again we're faced with a radical right and a complicit left.... both captured and doing the bidding of the 1%.
if people would quit voting based on Fear the Green Party or some other progressive party could win -
decisions based on Fear are rightly correct
Here's a win win for everybody:
Almost all libs and progs are poor or struggling middle class, and cons are usually rich or neverhappen wannabee rich. So rich cons give libs part of their loot to make everybody comfortably rich and turn them into cons. Having money is the best way to turn a liberal into a right wing conservative no?
Ummm... but will our problems go away if we're all conservatives? I don't think so. Throughout history conservatives, political, religious, economic, military and social, have always been an authority problem. Maybe this will only work if oligarchy conservatives give up all of their trillions and turn into middle class liberals...
Thinking out loud...
More like stupidity by default, Scheer!
Your type of fearful BS, and 'vote for the "least worst" again', won't fly anymore, Mr. Collaborationist "Vichy" pawn of Empire.
The seminal CAUSE of all our ‘symptom problems’ is the DGE (Disguised Global Empire), the corporate/financial/militarist (and media) EMPIRE which has captured and now fully “Occupies” our former country—- along with the U.K. Israel, Germany, France, et al—- by hiding behind the facade of its modernized two-party “Vichy” sham of faux-democratic and totally illegitimate government, as surely as the Nazi Empire tried to do with its crude and earlier single-party “Vichy” regime in France c. 1940-44.
Getting a 'CJ' (a Clinton-job) from Scheer and voting for the supposedly "least worst" out of fear is like believing the Lucy with the 'D' dress on is being a little more honest in "promising, really, really promising, this time" to hold the football. And we are as stupid as ol Charlie Brown every football season if we believe Scheer that the Lucy in the 'D' dress is going to be any better than the Lucy in the 'R' dress when it comes to pulling away the football of democracy every friggin time.
"A POX of both their 'Vichy' parties"!
In fact, a cogent argument can be made that Obama is worse than 'the other', simply because he has already proven to the DGE (Disguised Global Empire) that when it comes to making most of the people most of the time think that they are still living in a functional democracy --- instead of the dual "Vichy" party Global Empire that has stolen, 'captured', and now fully "Occupies" our former country --- "Nobody Does It Better" than Secret Agent 008, Obama.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMOd1JJvwlM
[Listen to the lyrics, --- they're "to die for" --- "Nobody does it better. Makes me feel bad for the rest. I wasn't looking, but somehow you found us. There's some kind of magic inside you. etc. etc.]
Yea, the magic to fool more people more of the time than anyone else --- who the Empire hired to hide an 'Inverted Totalitarian' empire, and make it seem like a democracy!
Best luck and love to the “Occupy Empire” movement.
Liberty, democracy, justice, & equality
Over
Violent/Vichy
Empire,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Occupy Empire sign:
“The faces of Empire”
Obama = Petain
Romney = Hitler
What gutlessly voting for
‘least worst’ leads to!
I think you mixed the roles of Obama and Romney.
karlof, No, I don't think so.
Obama is merely recruited and paid collaborationist help, shilling for the Empire and doing a great job of keeping its identify guilefully hidden behind the facade of democracy.
Whereas, the potentially unrestrained Romney is a self-funded member in good standing of the Empire himself --- but his ability to fool all the people all the time is less than the O-man, and most importantly he is more likely to 'go off the reservation' and try to run the Empire himself --- which was the Nazi Empire's problem with the H-man, and the Soviet Empire's problem with the S-man.
karlof, the debate seems unresolvable until its too late. But the fact remains that the Empire wins either way --- and can always switch their players on the field.
Best,
Alan
Thanks for your sensible explanation. We could quibble, but the result wouldn't matter. Do you think the Ds would nominate Biden if Obama gets ventilated? Or would it matter when that event occurs, which I think highly likely?
karlof1, I tend not to want to speculate regarding what might happen if someone is aired out or leaves the stage, because if it is someone of humanitarian value it is unfortunate, and if not it tends to make unjustified martyrs.
But clearly Biden would not be acceptable to any ruling and disguised Empire as a front-man.
Best to you and yours,
Alan