Category: Barack Obama

Almost three years ago Obama announced his support for FTA-Peru, after 4,000,000 Peruvian workers and farmers had gone out on general strike against it, and my previous indifference to that amiable wind-bag turned into hostility.

FTA-Peru was already a smoking-gun about the “real” Obama, but it wasn’t obvious enough for most of the so-called “progressive blogosphere,” as beautifully represented by DailyKos, MyDD, and many other high-traffic sites which quickly turned into cheerleaders for their inane and unprincipled TV Messiah.

Of course Obama could have turned himself around at any time between then and now, before he ran all the way off the far-right edge of the world with his repulsive Catfood Commission to cut Social Security  benefits, and cuts in the food stamps program at a time when 41,000,000 Americans depend on it, and all his broken promises about FISA and $300 billion in new tax-cuts for corporations and all the rest of it.

So why didn’t the progressive blogosphere unmask that repulsive con-man before he walked into the Oval Office?

All of us had access to a thousand times as much information as ever before. How many people in Peoria could read the New York Times and the Guardian and news reports from Peru and government reports on all conceivable subjects in 1952?

But in 1952 our two major parties nominated Eisenhower and Stevenson, both of them candidates whose experience and character make Obama look like less than zero.

Who was Obama in 2002?

Not much more than an undistinguished state senator from Illinois who won a student election at the Harvard Law Review once upon a time.

He had been crushed in a Democratic Congressional primary by Bobby Rush in 2000, when nobody noticed anything like charisma anywhere near him, but that was before Penny Pritzker hired Axelrod and Plouffe and their extremely expensive talents turned nothing into the illusion of…

Barack Obama!

That TV caricature was created by the unlimited wealth of Penny Pritzker, financial chairwoman of Obama’s campaign and former chairwoman of Superior Bank, who had to pay a $460 million fine to keep herself out of jail, but still couldn’t find another $10 million to reimburse the investors that she and her partners had diddled out of their life savings!

“OK, so your heart’s broken,” as the old song goes. So’s mine. But we have to get over it–now–and start taking action for the November election.

Granted, we’re far from where we thought we’d be when Barack Obama was elected and people danced in the streets. Change was on its way, spearheaded by Obama’s soaring words and by the millions of ordinary Americans who got involved as never before to help carry him to victory.  We thought we’d finally created the opening for a historic transformation.  

Now, too many of us watch morosely from the sidelines, feeling disappointed, spurned,  and betrayed, wondering if anything we can do will matter. We’re angered by the gap between Obama’s lofty campaign rhetoric and his reality of half-steps and compromises, and by his failure to fight passionately for his policies. We’re angered that we dared to hope for more. We’re angered at scorched-earth Republican obstructionism, a Supreme Court inviting corporations to buy our democracy at will, and a public all too receptive to blatant lies. In response, we decide not to let our hearts get broken again by taking the risk of working for change, at least not in the electoral arena. We feel this way even though most of us have done little since Obama took office to create the kind of sustained grassroots movements that could have actually pressed him and a resistant Senate to take stronger stands.

So how do we act in the upcoming election despite dashed hopes?  How do we do this in a way that builds for the future?

The first Rule of Holes: When you’re in one, STOP digging.

—  Molly Ivins

Stop Digging?   Check!

Heck, even Erin Burnett (of CNBC) admitted the Stimulus is working, today on MTP … that

“Without the stimulus we would be significantly worse off than we are now.”

— any serious economist says so. …  She has the charts.

so do we.

How Barack Obama Became Mr. Unpopular

Michael Scherer, Sept. 02, 2010, Time.com

A couple of weeks back and a dozen miles west of Elkhart, hundreds gathered in another school gym – except this time it was for a job fair. With the local unemployment rate above 12% and rising again this summer, about a third of the employer display tables stood empty. Julie Griffin, who voted for Obama in ’08, sat down at the room’s edge, well dressed and discouraged. After 23 years as a payroll administrator at a local RV plant, she got laid off 18 months ago. “Really, what has he been doing?” she said when I asked about Obama’s efforts to help people like her. “I guess I don’t know what he is doing.”

…

This shift in perception – from Obama as political savior to Obama as creature of Washington – can be seen elsewhere. When Obama arrived in office in January ’09, his Gallup approval rating stood at 68%, a high for a newly elected leader not seen since John Kennedy in 1961. Today Obama’s job approval has been hovering in the mid-40s, which means that at least 1 in 4 Americans has changed his or her mind. The plunge has been particularly dramatic among independents, whites and those under age 30. With midterm elections just nine weeks off, instead of the generational transformation some Democrats predicted after 2008, the President’s party teeters on the brink of a broad setback in November, including the possible loss of both houses of Congress. By a 10-point margin, people say they will vote for Republicans over Democrats in Congress, the largest such gap ever recorded by Gallup.

Instead of wringing our hands and exchanging insults and blame —

We should be, getting up to speed on,

How the Republicans Keep putting the Brakes on Progress!

For Example:

Republicans block small business plan in Senate

Donna Smith, Reuters – Jul 29 2010

Obama has been pushing for passage of the lending measure arguing that getting more capital into the hands of independent community bankers would lead to more small business loans. It is supported by independent bankers and business groups.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, small businesses have found it difficult to obtain loans that would help them expand as the economy recovers from the recession.

[…]

Senate Republicans blocked a $30-billion plan to help community banks boost lending to small businesses […]

Some Republicans have cast the small-business proposal as part of what they consider government overreach by the Obama administration.

Huh?  

Helping Small Businesses to put people back to work — that’s government overreach?

On what planet?

Phyllis Bennis is a Senior Analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, and is the author of Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis, of Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power, and of Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer.

Bennis has in the past argued for US reparations to be paid to Iraq for the years of US occupation and the destruction and damage inflicted on Iraq and the country’s peoples by the 2003 invasion and the occupation.

In an interview recorded Tuesday with Real News CEO Paul Jay, Bennis analyses Obama’s Oval Office Address on Iraq, August 31, 2010, talks about how Obama has adopted the Bush narrative about Iraq, and touches a bit on Iraq’s future and on the future of US foreign policies in the region, as well as somewhat about how those policies affect Iran and Afghanistan.

Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette

When I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I’m just like, “Oh shut up” I’m so sick of them because they’re always complaining. — Glenn Beck

~~~~~~~~~~~

Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny.  He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives.  He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy. — Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Originally posted on Citizen Orange.

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Saad Nabeel and I am writing to you from Bangladesh. Prior to my arrival in this nation, I lived in the United States for 15 years. My parents brought me to America at age three. It is the only home I know. I used to attend the University of Texas at Arlington with a full scholarship in Electrical Engineering. Through no fault of my own I was forced to leave my home, friends, possessions, and most importantly, my education behind.

November 3rd 2009 is a day I will never forget. My mother called me and told me that my father had been detained by ICE and that we needed to leave immediately to Canada to seek refugee status. Being an only child, I had to take care of my mother and go with her.

Let me jog your memory, about one of the more memorable things the Former VP said to a ‘fiscally responsible’ Treasury Secretary — right before he fired him …

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill was told “deficits don’t matter” when he warned of a looming fiscal crisis.

OnTheIssues.org

[…]

O’Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone — posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. “You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: “We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due.” A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.

Source: Adam Entous, Reuters, on AOL News Jan 11, 2004

Maybe “deficits don’t really matter” — whenever the Gophers have the National “Credit Card” in THEIR Pockets — Then it’s Party time, for their friends and buddies in the corporate boardrooms?

Otherwise — it’s “evict the lazy bastards”.  

Cut the Funds for something — NOW!

Originally posted on Citizen Orange.

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Lizbeth Mateo and I am undocumented. On May 17th, on the 56th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, I, along with Mohammad Abdollahi, Yahaira Carrillo and two others, became the first undocumented students to risk deportation by staging a sit-in inside Senator McCain’s office in Tucson, Arizona, to demand the immediate passage of the DREAM Act. As a result of that sit-in we were arrested, turned over to ICE, and we now face deportation