The public humiliation of President Obama

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

A sad thing is happening to Barak Obama. As it has during past periods of crisis, the American electorate sought the “necessary man,” a highly qualified leader to assume the powers of the Presidency. Obama has the personal qualities of intellect and character to address the great difficulties facing the nation. But as daily events are beginning to reveal, Obama’s presidency has been betrayed from within. All of the bold measures he promised during his campaign and in recent speeches are being steadily undermined by his own advisers and deputies. How can this be?

Over the last thirty years, the moneyed interests in the United States developed a sophisticated system of recruiting and co-opting large numbers of politically prominent or promising individuals. By means of selective promotions, institutional subsidies, book contracts, and many other forms of professional favoritism, the owner’s of our nation’s wealth, corporations and private fortunes, have effectively bought off the entire set of candidates for national leadership. As Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall said “I don’t care who does the electing as long as I do the nominating.”

The American plutocracy controls the mass media. It controls talk radio. It controls popular entertainment. But, most importantly, it controls the pool of individuals from whom Barak Obama chooses the officers of his administration. The otherwise inexplicable actions of Geithner and Summers are no mystery once one understands that they were recruited to be agents of wealth decades ago. The persistence of the Military Industrial Complex and the likelihood of fresh attempts to raid Social Security are not puzzling once one understands that anyone “qualified” to lead these agencies and survive confirmation hearings is an agent of the plutocracy.

The consequences of this situation are unfortunate for our new President. Having promised vigorous action, his growing impotence in the face of concerted resistance to his policies BY HIS OWN APPOINTEES will result in his public humiliation. The only way out of this trap is to replace the plutocratic hand-puppets in his administration with outsiders who would immediately be labelled as “dangerous,” “radical,” or “fringe” figures, the standard code words used to denounce leaders whose first loyalty is to our republic and not to America’s wealthiest.

Every time one of Obama’s promises to the American people is betrayed by a member of his own administration, our President is humiliated. His popularity will not survive such humiliation, and unless he makes abrupt changes in his inner circle, the hope he promised our nation will prove false.

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  1. The President is a mouthpiece…

    Unless he chooses not to be – witness the change in JFK after the Missile Crisis, striving for peace with USSR and a premature (according to the planners) end to the Cold War, which is what arguably got him killed.

    Obama will have the same choice to make and face the same risks. He can continue to suck the big bankster teet or kill the motherfucker and reboot the system with a new National Bank which is PUBLICLY owned.

    g.

    • ANKOSS on March 17, 2009 at 16:04
      Author

    Obama’s rapid rise shows that he had an extraordinary ability to play the system and win consistently. The problem is that he has reached the highest obtainable office, and the system is now playing him.

    It will take a huge amount of courage and gut-wrenching decisions to replace Wall Street hand-puppets like Geithner and Summers. Lincoln was hobbled by incompetents and untrustworthy subordinates until he found his way. Let us hope that Obama can improve as well.

  2. that Obama, despite what, I believe, are his heartfelt wishes and desires to straighten things out, will be limited in his efforts.  The same forces that were with us these past eight years didn’t go away when Bush and Cheney left — those same forces are with us today and will combat Obama in whatever he tries to do that is not distinctly to their advantage.  Just in his attempts to get us involved with green jobs, utilizing alternative energies, etc., the opposition to these efforts is fierce.

    Utter pathos!  It’s not enough that Americans have lost their jobs, with no jobs having been created during all those past eight years, it’s not enough that thousands of Americans have lost and continue losing their homes, it’s not enough that hard-working Americans 401-k’s have been plundered by the Wall Street criminals, now, there is a concerted effort going on to convince Obama that we must be “fiscally responsible.”  What does that mean?  Pete Peterson, a Republican multi-billionaire, an octogenarian, believes that the elderly are a drain on society.  He is sinking tons of money into a campaign to pressure Obama into utilizing the $3 trillion in Social Security funds awaiting the baby-boomers to pay back some of the nation’s indebtedness.  He’s doing this under the guise of his foundation.  This is something we must keep on top of.  These are YOUR monies and MY money — NOT the governments, they are merely a fiduciary administrator of the funds.

    I honestly feel sorry for what Obama is up against.  And the lobbyists use all kinds of filthy tactics, such as, “If you don’t support this, then will make sure X, Y, and Z doesn’t happen!” etc.  

    The problem is the anti-trust laws are a joke and corporations have become increasingly larger, with the enablement of Bush, over a period of time.  The whole business with Bush crying the sky would cave in if a bailout was not had for the banks and Wall Street, as everyone knows by now, was simply another means of suckering the American people, making chumps of us once again.  In reality, there obviously, was no grand threat if they didn’t receive the bailout, since they can delve out monstrous bonuses, etc.  No, the real reason for it was so the lesser guys could be forced out and “eaten up” by the bigger guys, i.e., Chase, picked up Merrill, Lynch, Bank of America, picked up Washington Mutual, etc.  A well planned effort to increase the power of certain entities.  These out of control corporations need to be busted up.  

  3. http://www.google.com/search?h

    • Valtin on March 17, 2009 at 22:52

    He can lie down in it.

    I don’t see that he promised much more than what we are getting. Unless he were to turn in a radical direction towards populism or a real commitment to social justice and anti-militarism, I don’t see how things will change, except that even if soft soap rhetoric will be case aside so the Vulcans can return to office.

    god help us all…

  4. http://legalschnauzer.blogspot

    to the list too.

  5. Obama has already done more than enough to do America in.

    • Edger on March 18, 2009 at 02:02

    promised the world to the world to get himself elected, or at least like many “good” salesmen allowed too many people to make unfounded assumptions about his intentions, and now finds he cannot deliver the expected product.

    The other side of that coin is all the people whose expectations were unfounded and too high.

    An example from almost two years ago:

    …what does it mean to “leave Iraq”? Here’s where most of the Democratic candidates come smack up against that hard place. There is a longstanding bipartisan consensus in the foreign-policy establishment that the US must control every strategically valuable region of the world — and none more so than the oil heartlands of the planet. That’s been a hard-and-fast rule of the elite for some six decades now. No matter how hard the task may be, they demand that presidents be rock-hard enough to get the job done.

    So whatever “leave Iraq” might mean, no candidate of either party likely to enter the White House on January 20, 2009 can think it means letting Iraqis determine their own national policies or fate.



    So the Democratic front-runners must promise voters that they will end the war — with not too many ideologically laden ifs, ands, or buts — while they assure the foreign-policy establishment that they will never abandon the drive for hegemony in the Middle East (or anywhere else). In other words, the candidates have to be able to talk out of both sides of their mouths at the same time.

    It’s depressing, but I’d recommend reading the entire article.

    George W. Obama?

    “The single most important job of any president is to protect the American people,” he affirmed in a major foreign-policy statement last April. But “the threats we face…. can no longer be contained by borders and boundaries…. The security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people.” That’s why the U.S. must be the “leader of the free world.” It’s hard to find much difference on foreign policy between Clinton and Obama, except that Barack is more likely to dress up the imperial march of U.S. interests in such old-fashioned Cold War flourishes.

    That delights neoconservative guru Robert Kagan, who summed up Obama’s message succinctly:  “His critique is not that we’ve meddled too much but that we haven’t meddled enough…. To Obama, everything and everyone everywhere is of strategic concern to the United States.”  To control everything and everyone, he wants “the strongest, best-equipped military in the world…. A 21st century military to stay on the offense.” That, he says, will take at least 92,000 more soldiers and Marines — precisely the number Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has recommended to President Bush.

    • dkmich on March 18, 2009 at 23:56

    he is spending his political capital in handfuls.   I have no idea how long it will take Americans to give up on him; but when they do, it won’t be changed.   He promised bold CHANGE, and he delivered more of the same.    

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