Category: Barack Obama

I know now that it is foolishness personified to believe that the Democratic Party, nor any of the existing spheres of influence currently established will provide the strong leadership we need.  Back in 2006, I was, of course, certainly elated that we had won back control of the House and the Senate, but my reservations then were that the core of the majority body were the same bumblers and bloodless supposed “leaders” whose inaction led to a loss of control in the first place, back in 1994.  Unfortunately, these fears seem to have been confirmed.  Some have proposed term limits to counter-balance this tendency and while I have my own reservations regarding that solution, I know that surely there must be a better way than what we have now.  Long ago, my home state, Alabama, knew that its concerns were likely subordinate to that of wealthier, more well-connected states, so it consistently has elected the same weasels to office, knowing that with seniority comes power and with power comes the ability to set legislative priority.

Even dating back a hundred years ago or more, the state continued to elect the same decrepit, graying elder statesmen for this very reason.  The most notable example of this was when, out of fear that these men would die in office, a special election was held, whereby voters could select not only these long-standing candidates for perhaps the last time, but also those who would immediately take power the instant they passed away.  “They will be our pallbearers”, one of the ancients was reported to have said at the time.  This unique balloting situation was partially due to the fact that Alabama was a poor state and couldn’t afford the additional expense of printing out a second round of ballots if one of its aging representatives died, but it was also due to the fact that the state wasn’t willing to give up its share of influence in the Congress until it absolutely had to, either.  If Robert Byrd runs again, one wonders if the voters of West Virginia would be similarly inclined to pursue this strategy.  One also wonders if this unique course of action had been employed in Massachusetts had Ted Kennedy’s illness come to light back in 2006 how different the situation facing us today would have been.  

I think part of what we are struggling with is an ability to adjust to uncertainty.  I have recently noticed that workers in their forties and fifties, those who have paid into the system for years, are now beginning to get laid off in scores.  First came the low-wage earners, then came the young, now a group previously insulated from layoffs.  This makes for an angry, confused electorate, one which might finds itself unable to construct much in the way of a unified front from within, but still votes to throw the bums out when it comes time to cast a ballot.  What I do know, based on observing larger trends over time, is that the economy will come back eventually.  This is, of course, not exactly comfort food to those drawing unemployment and subsisting on a fraction of their previous income.  And, we must admit, nor is it a good sign for the party in power.  

We can tout a stimulus as a job saver, but the true measure of its impact might potentially not be measured for years.  The same goes for health care reform.  What leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many about the program is that it begins collecting the necessary tax revenue to properly fund it almost the instant it is enacted, yet is not fully implemented until 2014.  Not only that, some parts of it will not be in full force until a few years after that.  While this implementation stage might be the only way the system can go into effect without toxic shock, that very fact has and will prove to be a powerful talking point for Republicans and disaffected Independents already skeptical of increased taxation, for whatever means.    

In situations like these, the natural inclination is to look for a historical antecedent, and some point back to the 1982 Mid-Congressional elections as well as the 1966 cycle.  Neither of these fit the profile neatly.  The Democratic majorities in the House, for example, were far greater than they are now.  In 1966, the Democratic party shed 47 seats but still had a majority cushion of more then 50 seats.  In 1982, Republicans picked up 26 seats, but the majority Democrats still had over 100 more than the GOP.  No one knows the number of seats that will be lost this coming November, but I still am unconvinced that control will change hands in either chamber.  What is more likely is severely reduced numbers which will likely require more conciliatory and concessionary measures with minority Republicans.  And, to be blunt, perhaps that isn’t all bad since resounding majorities in both the House and Senate have not prevented legislation from proceeding forward at anything more than a snail’s pace.  The Republicans may have put all of their winnings on obstructionism, but inter-party fighting has proved itself a far more effective opponent than anything the GOP has flung at it.  

What concerns me more is the completely justified anger at Wall Street and big business, who have methodically bought up every seat at the bargaining table if not other seats in other contexts.  This sort of conduct is indefensible from whichever context it is examined, and President Obama and the Democrats in power could launch attacks against this base inequality that would prove to be very popular with voters.  Though a few Republican voices might sound the alarm, it is a position that rarely goes sour and can always tap into an endless source of anger, frustration, and bile.  Populist anger at the wealthy is an ancient tactic and one that even the most fervent second-guesser can do little more than scream about, since few actually will listen, or have much in the way of general sympathy.    

As for more contentious matters, Democrats must avoid letting their opponents frame the issue for them.  To some extent, I understand anyone’s fear of big government, if only from the context of reduced efficiency of work and decreased quality of service.  Since the Recession began, I have noticed that in many government agencies, budget shortfalls and layoffs have gummed up or slowed to a trickle what would seem to be rudimentary, straightforward processes.  In so doing, this has given government employees no incentive to do an efficient job.  If you will please pardon, I will again refer to a personal example from my own life.  When I filed for food stamps two and a half months ago, the framework existed to allow and encourage claimants to send out applications online.  But, as I found when it took twice as long as it ever should have to receive my benefits, budget deficits prevented the agency from being able to hire and train the necessary people to process these online claims.  Thus, my file sat on a desk for a month and if I had not contacted an advocacy agency, it would probably still be there.                

In Progressive circles we talk frequently about Good Government™ and its enormous potential to do a massive amount of laudable things.  I, of course, believe in it as well, though I recognize that up to now it is still a dream kicked further and further down the road.  President Obama was swept into power talking about the merits of smart government and, lamentably, up to this point, I’m afraid I don’t see it.  Yet, neither am I willing to sagely propose, as some do, that there is some purity in the private sector.  Different name, same trough.  I suppose it depends on that which you fear the least.  It is the formation and perpetuation of systems which have shortchanged all of us that leads people to make conclusions as to the ultimate success or failure of any new enterprise, government or otherwise.  Our pessimism might not be justified, but our skepticism is not.

Though I too have engaged in finger-pointing as to why we’ve reached this climacteric a mere year after it seemed like we were on top of the world, I recognize that it is ultimately a self-defeating activity.  In the end, it doesn’t matter whose fault it was, unless that entity or collective body is willing to reform itself.  Barack Obama was a rock star once, not a vacuous celebrity as some tried to paint him.  Having released a critical disappointment that didn’t sell nearly as well as advertised, he is now facing the first openly hostile reviews of his career.  Yet, have no fear, fans.  Americans love a comeback, particularly with an extensive tour attached to it.  Someone as talented and as capable easily has the dexterity and strength to exceed our wildest expectations again, but only if he has the help he needs and he presses an agenda with a reasonable chance of succeeding.      

No person is an island.  We have wept and prayed and fasted and purged and been delayed by the same impasse.  My own contribution to a growing canon of proposed solutions is that we take a more active stance within government itself.  Anyone can lock arms, hold hands, and sing stirring songs.  Anyone can find themselves beholden to Protest Culture™, whereby one assumes that rallies, marches, and symbolic posturing are sufficient in and of themselves.  Anyone can oppose and find with opposition a million followers, a million voices of affirmation, and a million friends and supporters validating each and every sentient point.  We can hold the feet of our elected Representatives to the fire, but I believe in the value of electing new feet that won’t need to be forced towards the fireplace on a maddeningly consistent basis.  This is within our power.  

I am reminded of how much talk yesterday revolved around a plea for us to not sanitize the legacy of Dr. King and to keep his memory alive as a revolutionary who made many in positions of power very uncomfortable.  Indeed, if all we remember him today was as a purveyor of sentimental, feel-good platitudes, then we forget that he was more than that.  Far more.  Had he been merely Santa Claus, he would not have been assassinated.  At times, traditional liberalism has been reduced all too often to a never-ending Pete Seeger concert, with the sting removed and without any obligation whatsoever to be self-reflective.  When I left a more conservative, more Christ-centered faith of my own accord and moved towards unashamedly activist liberal faith, I always found it curious how easily the John Lennon song “Imagine” was adopted as a kind of mission statement of sorts.  If one examines the lyrics literally, its lyrics advocate an atheistic, anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist Utopia—a fact that gets overlooked due to the attractiveness of the melody that obscures what even a cursory examination of the words implies.

It is time for Democrats to be bold and edgy again.  I see this all the time in the blogosphere, but I rarely see it among elected representatives.  And even when a Representative or Senator does stick his or her neck out, it is usually to make a splash by forcefully uttering some patently inflammatory or controversial statement, knowing full well it will be media catnip.  The immediate impact is usually positive, but few know how to push their agenda beyond immediate shock value and dramatic statements that sound compelling at first hearing, but often are a bit on the childish end of the spectrum by the end.  And, it hardly needs adding, even these sorts of attitudes are in short supply, all told.  No one ever confused the base as being anything less than fired up and ready to go.  If those elected to serve us are not willing to listen to us, we have an obligation to replace them with those who will, and in so doing, being willing to drafting candidates from within our ranks to fill the slots.  Those willing to complain are legion, but those willing to serve are often not.  Participatory Democracy does not depend on a particular Patrician class we deem the experts and the only sorts that can get the job done.  The skill set needed now and forever is only the willingness to run and the ability to learn the game.

A year ago, when Obama was inaugurated, when the new Congress began with huge Democratic majorities, I thought the Bush/Cheney years were finally over.  But they’re not over.  Nothing has changed.  

I’ve supported Democrats for 40 years. Despite all their betrayals, I felt I had no choice.  I told myself they were the lesser of two evils.  I told myself incremental change is better than no change at all.  But nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change if progressives keep supporting the Democratic branch of the Corporate Fascist Party.

During the Great Depression, Woody Guthrie traveled across America and saw the injustice, poverty, and despair of a nation suffering the consequences of economic and social injustice. In the city square, in the shadow of the steeple, by the relief office he saw his people.  They were hungry, they were out of work, they were out of hope.  As he was walking that ribbon of highway, he saw what America is, but he also saw what America can be.   He never stopped hoping that someday, America would become a land of economic and social justice. So he wrote This Land Is Your Land, as an anthem of what America can be.

His story is our story, his anthem is our anthem, his land is our land, his cause is our cause. Woody Guthrie told the truth about America because someone had to.  He told it across this country, as he walked through the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling, with a guitar on his back and the truth in his soul . . .

According to the Boston Globe, nearly half of Americans polled believe that U.S. dictator Barack Obama is not living up to his campaign promises.

Nearly half of the Americans surveyed said Obama is not delivering on his major campaign promises, and a narrow majority had some or no confidence that he will make the right decisions for the country’s future.

More than a third saw the president as falling short of their expectations, about double the proportion saying so at the 100-day mark of Obama’s presidency in April. At the time, 63 percent said the new president had accomplished a “great deal” or a “good amount.” The percentage saying so in the recent poll dropped to 47 percent.

Although the article does not mention the loss of left-wing support as reason for the drop-off, choosing instead to focus on right-wing discontent, the overall attitude indicated by surveys is that he is either incapable or unwilling to make good on public expectations of change away from the institutionalized horrors of the Bush-Cheney regime.

The signs are everywhere that at least one chamber of Congress will revert back to Republican rule, though the public is unlikely to notice the difference.  Obama really shot himself in the foot by raising people’s expectations without having any intention of meeting them.  No one thought he would be able to work miracles, and no one has claimed that he would end eight years of devastation overnight.  But with a year now behind his dictatorship, Obama has not made even token efforts to undo the policies of the Bush-Cheney regime – and in some cases, such as government secrecy and illegal spying on Americans, he has exceeded them.  The public is not stupid.  We do not enjoy being lied to, used, taken for granted.  And we will punish those who do so.

As many of you have been doing, I am nervously monitoring the special election for Massachusetts senator.  By now, one would hope that no one needs reminding of the repercussions and consequences a defeat would portend both for the short term and for the long term, but one would hope also that its instantaneous impact would spur many to make long-deferred reforms.  To wit, Coakley’s defeat would make a powerful statement to residents in even the bluest of blue states.  To wit, liberalism must self-monitor and must fortify itself against a desire to snooze and slumber.  Nothing is owed to us in this world and a person is only as successful as his or her last triumph.  This realization can be applied well beyond the Democratic party and all the concentric circles of influence and power that feed into it.  Indeed, the ripple effects if Scott Brown wins will be felt across the country and will spawn a thousand prophets in the publication wilderness, each proclaiming that the end is nigh for a Democratic majority.  

Constipated activist organizations now tapping out a panicked SOS are profuse, but as is my want, I’d like to single out one in particular.  One can only hope that if, God forbid, Coakley were to lose, the mainstream Feminist™ organizations currently pushing for her election might be forced to concede that their strategies are out of date and their larger influence is negligible in the grand scheme of things.  Coakley’s detached Front Porch Campaign did not resonate well with voters inclined to distrust and thus to be turned off by on candidates who seem above kissing babies, shaking hands, and being highly visible to the prospective voter.  Though I do not welcome the sense of helplessness that might reverberate through many workplaces come tomorrow night, I know that sometimes people have to learn their lessons the hard way.  And in so doing, they have to sometimes have to learn them more than once.  Still, how many times do some have to be on the losing end of easily preventable catastrophes before they recognize that the problem is with themselves, not with external factors?  

Sloth and entitlement are usually fatal flaws in politics and activism, and at least one recent harsh blogosphere attack against the established players of Feminism™ was penned in an effort to shake them out of their old ways.  These organizations do have a function and I’m not advocating that they need to be dismantled, but they do need to step into the times and embrace new realities.  The true tragedy is that there are any number of highly qualified women who could be enlisted for the cause and be convinced to run for any number of high elective offices.  Instead, someone decides to earmark and denote a particular legislative office for a Female™ and then feels obligated to advance a candidate with the highest possible degree of name-recognition, regardless of whether she is a good fit for the office.  In addition to being bad policy, this is tokenism writ large.  Tokenism has never truly advanced anyone’s noble imperative.  What it has done is appease someone’s guilt and in so doing serve as a temporary concession rather than a desire to completely integrate women actively into the political process.  If we were really committed to the idea of equality, then such decisions would be a matter of course, not a conscious effort towards appeasement.    

In this same regard, a prior school of political theory and general leadership philosophy believed that in order to be taken seriously and to survive in a man’s world, women in positions of authority ought to strive to be as tough and as masculine as their male counterparts.  In effect, as the theory goes, they ought to adopt the pose and guise of a man for fear of seeming weak or being summarily discounted as ineffectual and ineffective as a leader.  One would think that thirty or forty years of this would have given us the ability to recognize that sexist and misogynistic attacks come from everywhere, at any time, for any reason.  Women who make no apology for “encroaching” into traditionally male spaces will find themselves insulted for any reason at all, really.  For example, in the past few days, Coakley has found herself the target of a bizarre remark implying that someone ought to sodomize her with an electrical appliance.  One can’t get away from the offensive voices, unfortunately, but one can advance the authenticity of self as an excellent counter-weight to push back against the name-callers and childish smears.  

I still recall how Hillary Clinton shed tears at a campaign stop shortly before the New Hampshire primary, showing not just a very human, vulnerable side, but also a very feminine side as well.  In so doing, she transformed what was expected to be a sound drubbing into an improbable win that gave her campaign new life.  Women voters related heavily with the gesture and cast their ballots accordingly; I’m not entirely dissuaded from the notion that some men might have been taken aback in a good way, recognizing that there was more to the candidate the icy, calculating stereotype that made her seem supremely unlikeable and at times threatening to the male voter.  If we are ever to live in a world where the content of our character is more important than both the color of our skin and our reproductive organs, we will reach the point that no one ever feels the compulsion to pass, assimilate, or modify one’s authentic self to seem more fitting to majority norms.  Humanity and with it authenticity is what voters crave more than anything.  Policy wonkery and strategy are lost on the average voter who seeks to identify himself or herself personally with the latest slate of candidates for elective office.  When we can see ourselves clearly in those who run, then we are compelled to pull a lever for them on Election Day.          

I voted, in part, for Barack Obama because I saw parallels between his life story and my own.  In particular, the description of his mother closely mirrors my own—a woman passionately devoted to a cause beyond herself who sought to see the world through an optimistic lens, even though many criticized her desire as foolish and a trifle naïve.  Others saw their own dreams mirrored in his rhetoric and the possibility of what he represented.  Though a year later reality has set in and we are far less enthralled with the President then we were then, we continue to find his policies more objectionable than who he is as a person.  Personality has limitations, but it can go a long way.  A politician who is disliked as a person must rely on the political atmosphere around him or her, and sometimes only maintains power when his or her opposition is reviled even more.  

Competence goes a long way, too, and I know that, speaking from a strictly women’s rights perspective, we can’t expect to not have reproductive rights compromised for the sake of passing a massive reform act if we are unable to break free from the scourge of tokenism.  Victories are won with a collection of smaller successes that, linked together, move closer towards ultimate triumph.  An occasional arm-twist, guilt-trip or, worse yet, established tradition of being granted an occasional “favor” in exchange for unwavering support are not going to get us where we need to be.  No one would ever confuse that for complete integration and total parity.  We should know instinctively what it will take to get there, but the question remains if we are willing to do the hard work on the ground to actualize it.  The ivory tower might be cushy and familiar, but it is a universe in and of itself, one wholly removed from any semblance of the actual lives of working people.  We have in front of us an opportunity to learn from what will be a debacle whether victory is won or lost.  Let’s not ignore it.  

Barack promised change — and sure enough, things changed for the worse



-Joe Bageant

To Hell with the ‘left’! I am finished, done, disillusioned and over it, the divorce papers have been filed and are now finalized and I am not going back. As of this day, I will no longer allow myself to be affiliated or endorse the ‘left’ in any way, shape or form. So long folks, it was real and it was fun but in the end it was unfulfilling and dare I say, a waste of time and effort. Is this overly harsh? Perhaps it is but the break had to be made and it can no longer be put off. I assure you, this was no hasty decision but rather something that has been a slow and agonizing process, a steady drip…drip…drip.., like Chinese water torture and suddenly the mind goes, the spirit breaks and the ugly reality of the situation cannot be denied or disguised. So to all of my good friends on the left I wish you the very best but I am no longer one of you and maybe I never was, it was never dogma to me only a desire for some sort of social fairness and a fair shot but the American left being a shell of it’s former self with labor broken and the DLC corporatists having taken over the Democratic party it has been reduced to shills for the Democrats and squabbling identity groups each with an agenda that prevents any sort of unity necessary for a mass movement for real change. Sucks but that is just the way it has to be.

In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Obama walked out of a National Security Council meeting and observed, “for a country and a people who are no strangers to hardship and suffering, this tragedy seems especially cruel and incomprehensible.”

Those words from the man at the top of America’s cruel and incomprehensible political system, from the guardian of America’s cruel and incomprehensible economic system, from the protector of America’s cruel and incomprehensible banking system must seem especially meaningless to the hundreds of millions of victims of America’s corporate wars, corporate exploitation, and corporate repression.  The devastation in Haiti, as tragic and terrible as it is, is minor compared to the devastation inflicted on a global scale, inflicted every minute of every day, inflicted on the poor and the powerless of every nation by the corporate masters of this country.  

No Richter Scale can measure their destructive impact, no words can convey the enormity of the hardship and suffering they inflict.  The death toll is in the millions, but there’s no media coverage of that catastrophe.  No one provides assistance to the victims, there are no relief efforts, there’s no help on the way for the survivors trapped in that rubble, they’re on their own . . .

We can see the corruption, we can hear the lies, we can feel the consequences closing in, we can taste the bitterness, we can smell the smoke as America burns, as the world burns, as the future itself burns.  Obama and the Democrats aren’t putting out the fire, they’re fanning the flames.  Whether that’s due to stupidity or complicity doesn’t really matter anymore.  Putting out the fire is all that matters now.  

Get ready to do that alone, because we won’t be getting any help from the Obama addicts. They overdosed on unreality long ago.  They took the poison from the poison stream, then floated out of here, floated out of reality into Obama Land, where the inhabitants see only what they want to see, where they hear only what they want to hear.  They run through the streets, with eyes cold and dead, under a black belly of cloud in the rain, in through a doorway, they give each other white golden pearls, stolen from the sea, they’re raging at “purity trolls”, they’re raging, and a storm blows up in their eyes whenever they’re confronted with the truth.    

They’re addicts.  Denial is their drug.  They’re stoned on it, they’re hooked on it, they smoke it, they inject it, they mainline it, they freebase it, whatever it takes to get baked.  They’re all dealers of denial, they’re all pushers of denial, they hook each other up, they’re wired on it, they’re all wired on it, scoring the next fix is all they care about.  Whatever the Big Man does or doesn’t do is just fine with them.

 

Nearly four and a half years ago this nation experienced the two worst disasters of this past decade: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans’ federal flood. Today many consider them old news, if not history, but they still are present in the lives of those who survived them.

When Obama needed the votes of progressives to get elected, his message was Change We Can Believe In.  But now that he no longer needs us, now that he has power, he has a very different message for progressives . . .

That blunt message is echoing from one end of the Beltway to the other, from the White House to Capitol Hill, it’s echoing from K Street to Wall Street and across the corporate media airwaves. Corporate power must not be challenged.  Don’t even think about it.  Byron Dorgan got the message.  Chris Dodd got the message.  Robert Wexler got the message.  We all got the message.  

2 AM and she calls me ’cause I’m still awake,

Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?

I don’t have to tell you what her latest mistake was, I don’t have to tell you when she made that mistake, I don’t have to tell you because she wasn’t the only one who made that mistake.  100 million other Americans made the same mistake on November 4, 2008, they believed the lies, they voted for liars and frauds and career criminals up and down the ballot.  

So here we are.      

“Pragmatic” progressives tell us we can’t jump the track, the corporate media tells us we’re just cars on a cable, the “Christians” tell us life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table, so go to church unless you want to be damned to Hell for eternity like the Muslims and the Jews and the heathens in Africa and Asia. Well we’ve seen this movie before, we know who the killers are, we know who the victims are, we know who the warmongers are, we know who the hypocrites are, we know how it ends, we know how it always ends, but no one can find the rewind button, no one can ever find the rewind button.

Sing it if you understand . . .

The Real News Network’s Paul Jay talks with Glen Ford, Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report, “The Journal of African American Political Thought and Action”, who evaluates the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency, and observes, for a variety of good reasons, that the first US black president “takes every opportunity available to spit in the faces of black people, and to do this quite ostentatiously, very dramatically…”

NOTE: I seriously toned-down “Lee Harvey Obama” and published it at DKos. DKos version. I don’t know what will happen. Stay tuned.

I just finished reading JFK and the Unspeakable (JFK&U). It left me with a nagging sense of déjà vu. While JFK&U does go over a lot of assassination minutiae, its major contribution (IMHO) is to lay out all the actions that JFK took (and was about to take) to get out of Viet Nam before it became a quagmire, to break the suicidal momentum of the Cold War, and to generally wind down the influence of the military-industrial complex (MIC) (including support industries, like Big Steel), and especially the CIA.

In 2008, the American people voted for Obama because they wanted to get out of a similar open-ended, escalating, ideological “war on terror”, and they wanted to reduce the influence of the F.I.R.E. (Finance, Insurance, & Real Estate) corporations (as well as the MIC) that have been sucking the life out of the middle class.

Below the fold, we’ll see how that’s been working out.

———–

DISCLAIMER:

This diary, like many things I write, uses an historical ANALOGY. This diary is NOT about the Kennedy assassination; I’m not here to discuss the minutiae of Dallas. But, the diary does build upon Oswald’s widely-reported self-characterization:

“I’m just a patsy.” – Lee Harvery Oswald

Almost 50 years on, we are finally getting access to the records about the JFK assassination. New material from American, post-Soviet Russian, and Cuban sources has blown away what little credibility the Warren Commission report had left.

The latest Gallup poll in 2003 showed that an incredible 75 percent of the American people reject the findings of the Warren Commission and believe there was a conspiracy in the assassination. Only 19 percent believe that Oswald acted alone.

– Vincent Buglosi, The Assassination of JFK

So, if you want to read this essay and you are part of the NINETEEN PERCENT who still think Oswald was a brilliant planner, a fabulous marksman, and a lone nut, just pretend that “Oswald the Patsy” is some character in a novel or a movie, like “The Manchurian Candidate”.

——

JFK&U does everyone a service by looking at the entire political context of the assassination – something that the 20 year olds today have never heard before, because the discussion has been smashed down to partisan fanatics brawling over minutiae about bullets and autopsy results.

Mr. Douglass, OTOH, paints a convincing picture of the 180-degree turn away from peace after the assassination. JFK was moving America away from the permanent war state; LBJ gave the MIC everything it asked for. He greenlighted the massacre in Indonesia, escalated in Viet Nam, and backed off working with Kruschev and Castro to reduce tensions. These actions guaranteed another 25 years of the Cold War.

1. What were JFK’s politics?

JFK was president at the height of the Cold War, when generals were pushing for nuclear first strikes and invasions of Cuba, when the CIA was overthrowing governments with proxy armies, agents provocateur, and false-flag operations. But JFK tried to take things in a different direction:

…every move Kennedy made was anti-war.  This, Douglass argues, was because JFK, a war hero, had been deeply affected by the horror of war and was severely shaken by how close the world had come to destruction during the Cuban missile crisis. Throughout his life he had been touched by death and had come to appreciate the fragility of life.  Once in the Presidency, Kennedy underwent a deep metanoia, a spiritual transformation, from Cold Warrior to peace maker.  He came to see the generals who advised him as devoid of the tragic sense of life and as hell-bent on war.  And he was well aware that his growing resistance to war had put him on a dangerous collision course with those generals and the CIA.  On numerous occasions he spoke of the possibility of a military coup d’etat against him.

– Edward Curtin, a review of JFK and the Unspeakable

JFK also went to the mat with the steel industry over price hikes, earning the undying emnity of the business class with his widely reported quote:

“My father always told me that all businessmen were sons-of-bitches, but I never believed it until now.”

– JFK during the steel crsis, quoted in NYT, April 23, 1962.

The bottom line, according to James Douglass, was that JFK was anti-war and pro-labor – and it cost him his life. The assassination did not come out of nowhere; it was the effect and Kennedy’s political actions were the cause.

2. How did the public receive JFK’s politics?

Short answer: like rain in the desert.

Long answer: individual citizens on all sides wanted peaceful coexistence. They wanted to live and let live, rather than be incinerated en masse for the sake of an ideology. But military men, and the industries that served them – on both sides of the Cold War – pushed for nuclear confrontation. In the U.S., the Constitution was an inconvenience to the MIC. Plans like the infamous and un-Constitutional Operation Northwoods were seriously proposed by the rabid rightwing leadership of the military.

3. Where is this analogy going? What does it have to do with today?

Just as in the Cold War, the people of the U.S. want peace. They want an end to the fruitless and contrived “War on Terror”; and, like JFK, they believe there are less war-like policy alternatives to ever-increasing military budgets and ever-decreasing civil liberties. Americans also want an end to the ruinous class war from above that has all but bankrupted the middle class. (More personally, the want the same healthcare that the rest of the first world enjoys.)

Obama received a large majority of votes, vs the GOP ticket, because he was perceived to be the “peace” candidate, the middle-class candidate, the “sensible” candidate, the candidate who would deliver what the public wanted. And, even though his proponents will deny it, he was PERCEIVED to be the “progressive” candidate, the “Camelot”-redux candidate.

I started out hoping for Obama to succeed. Now, I can only hope that he will not fail disastrously. This essay is a call to him to wake up.

In my analogy, the American people play the role of JFK. In the face of demands for “permanent war” by the Military-Media-Industrial-Insurance Corporate Complex (MIC-squared), the people want to put an end to these wars that are draining the blood out of our middle class nation.

So here is the analogy. After the last month of war escalation, DOJ cave-ins, HCR stabs-in-the-back, (fill in your worst outrages here), the kindest take I can muster for Obama is that he MUST be a patsy. No one could be this obtuse about who elected him, the context of his election, and what is expected of him if he were not being coached to play a role. Of course, surrounded by “the bubble” of the WH and the Goldman Sachs bubble inside that, Obama is oblivious to the fact that he is being coached at all. He THINKS he’s doing the right thing.

Think about it. The corporations show NO loyalty to this country. They have all but privatized the military and made it into a bunch of corporate mercenaries. They have already moved their profits offshore and their factories to China. They are preparing to dump us. Given that, would you really want to be a pro-corporate President when the corporations can decide, at the drop of a hat, that it just isn’t worth any more of their profits to keep the charade of America going anymore? Not unless you THINK you are doing something good and patriotic, just like Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) did – in the well-understood scenario on which I’m hanging this ANALOGY.

I’m not the first person to come to the conclusion that Obama is being set up:

Obama and Democrats seem to think they’re securing the long-term support of the corporate establishment, they think they’re consolidating their power, but they’re walking right into a trap.  They’re being set up to fail, they’re being set up to take the blame when everything implodes.  

Darkness at Noon

4. So, who are Obama’s “handlers”?

One doesn’t have to look very far to find quite a lot of handlers. As doesn’t need repeating, the Obama Administration is crawling with Goldman Sachs alumni. And, there is the on-going GOP control of the Defense Department via Defense Secretary Gates, and the appointment of Cheney’s assassin master McCrystal. The most blatant handler is Rahm Emmanuel, who has recently declared his total contempt for the left wing of the party and his willingness to negotiate with the GOP, but not his own progressive wing.

It seems that no matter whom the American public elects, it finds the same bunch of warmongers and Wall St. pirates still in charge. But, this should be no surprise, because all this was already in place 50 years ago:

While the president struggled to push his newly found politics of peace past the anti-communist priorities of the CIA, that creature from the depths of the Cold War kept sprouting new arms to stop him. As in Vietnam, the CIA agents operating in other branches of the government…How had the CIA’s covert arms been grafted onto these other parts of the government…

Air Force headquarters…set up a Pentagon office to proovide military support for the clandestine operations of the CIA…CIA Director Allen Dulles was its actual creator…Dulles got (Colonel Fletcher Prouty) to create a network of subordinate… offices in the armed services, then throughout the entire US government. Each office that Prouty set up was put under a “cleared” CIA employee. That person took orders directly from the CIAZ but functioned under the cover of his particular office and branch of government…

The consequence…was that the CIA had placed a secret team of its own employees throgh the entire US government. It was accountable to no one except the CIA, headed by Allen Dulles…

– JFK and the Unspeakable,  pp 196-7

What are Max Baucus, Joe Lieberman, and the rest of the Blue Dogs but a team that is accountable only to its corporate masters? Even as they block the American public’s expressed wishes (70%+ poll numbers for the public option; majorities for not escalating in Afghanistan), MICsquared and Wall St. (i.e., corporatists) are busy setting up the financial assassination of that pesky, meddlesome public – that  middle class which wants neither permanent war, nor war on their civil liberties, their neglected infrastructure, their livelihoods, and their savings.

In the best traditions of plausible deniability, the PTB have been planning to blame the whole mess on the Democratic Party.

Just as JFK knew the MIC was plotting against him, the American public today knows that corporations are plotting against them. Just like JFK, they don’t know exactly where the hit is coming, but they know its out there.

5. Moving the Patsy into Position

In attempts to excuse Obama’s actions, many have talked about “the situation he has inherited”. But, I am more interested in the economic bureaucracy he has inherited. The hermetic seal of the Goldman Sachs bubble reminds me of the handlers that surrounded and facilitated the manufacturing of the “legend” of LHO.

There are cases where a person may attempt to infiltrate a target organization, with a well-prepared synthetic identity for them, called a “legend” in tradecraft.)

– legend

…the CIA took its own secret steps…toward setting up Lee Harvey Oswald as an identifiable Soviet-and-Cuban-directed assassin of the president. “Sheepdipping”, the process whereby sheep are plunged into a liquid to destroy parasites, had been applied in its intelligence sense to Oswald in New Orleans. There Oswald’s potentially incriminating associations in Fort Worth and Dallas…with the White Russian community were expunged in the pool of Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba dramatics.

– JFK and the Unspeakable, p74

We were distracted from Obama’s corporate handlers by the convenient controversy with Jeremiah Wright and the endless horserace with HRC. We heard a lot of progressive-sounding campaign speeches that, a year later, have turned out to be worthless. Once again, progressives have been right all along, but no one has listened. Its Iraq and WMDs all over again.

Before his 2004 Senate campaign (interesting in itself – see Appendix 2), Obama was a complete nobody on the national stage. His political biography during the Presidential race was the equivalent of a Potemkin village or a stage set. The question is not whether he has a “legend”. The question is: who paid for it and why?

6. Paymasters and 11-dimensional chess

Given the total lack of mainstream investigative journalism and the high death rate among whistelblowers these days, questions of motivation (the “why”) can be little more than a matter of speculation. Until there is hard, first-person evidence about the “why”, it is only fit for conspiracy theorists to discuss. But the fact remains that Wall St. and the MIC-squared have paid, and continue to pay for BHO to play out this patsy scenario. The media gives him just enough traction to establish that he is responsible; but it never gives him enough traction to expose the GOP for the bunch of obstructionists, racists, and seccessionists that they are.

Once one thinks about “handlers” and “controlled media”, all the talk about multi-dimensional chess takes on a new meaning. IMHO, the 11-D chess isn’t being played by Obama; its being played by the people who are maneuvering Obama into his role as patsy. The author of “Darkness at Noon” puts it similarly:

Obama isn’t playing 12 dimensional chess, he’s playing Russian Roulette with a bullet in every chamber.  

One would have to be either delusional or a clueless and loyal patsy to think that this disaster of Health Care “Reform” would not be extremely harmful to the Democratic Party across the board. With the awareness rising on the ACTUAL tax on the middle class that will be imposed to pay for this, the Dems are being made to look exactly like the GOP caricature of them. As the author of that piece asks:

How can a tax (“mandate”) on the middle class BY & FOR CORPORATIONS be called “reform” by Democrats?

7. Collateral Damage – the Democratic Party

The answer is that it can’t. The “mandate” is setting up the Democratic Party and progressives as co-conspirators in the murder of the middle class, just as Russia and Cuba were set up by Oswald’s coat-trailing at the Russian and Cuban embassies. (More detail on that can be found in Appendix 1.)

In the case of JFK, the framed “co-conspirators” were nuclear armed and willing to fight back; and the replacement president, LBJ, had some measure of humanity.

One must give the CIA (and the assassination sponsors that were even further in the shadows) their due for having devised and executed a brilliant setup. They had played out a scenario to Kennedy’s death in Dallas that pressured other government authorities to choose among three major options: a war of vengeance against Cuba and the Soviet Union based on the CIA’s false Mexico City documentation of a Communist assassination plot; a domestic political war based on the documents truly seen, but a war the CIA would fight with every covert weapon at its command; or a complete cover-up of any conspiracy evidence and a sitent coup d’etat that would reverse Kennedy’s efforts to end the Cold War. Lyndon Johnson, for his part, took little time to choose the only option he felt would leave him with a country to govern.

– JFK and the Unspeakable, p 81.

The whole concept of a menu of bad choices might explain how BHO, a  “Constitutional scholar” has decided not to prosecute John Yoo, has decided to continue the Orwellian “Patriot Act”, has decided to bring the status of “enemy combatant” into the U.S. prison system. Perhaps, as many on this board have suggested, its because the PTB have shown him “the Bill Hicks movie”. Fine, I’m willing to listen to such a suggestion. But don’t tell me these actions are 11-D chess.

The evisceration of the Constitution will come into its own after the economic shit really hits the fan, sometime in the next year or so (can you say “Shock Doctrine”?), the PTB will be free of that pesky middle class and any semblance of civil rights. (Take your pick on the cause of demise: dollar collapse, oil price spike, another stock market bubble popping, commercial real estate bubble popping, alternative currency pushes the dollar aside, massive inflation from all the debt…) If you want a worst-case scenario, read the uber-cassandra, James Kunstler:

My guess is that (Christmas) sales were dismal. Reports of such will start a train of events that sends many retail companies careening into bankruptcy, including some national chains, leading to lost leases in malls and strip malls, leading to a final push off the cliff for commercial real estate, leading to the failure of many local and regional banks, leading to the bankrupt FDIC having to go to congress directly to get more money to bail out the depositors, leading again to rising interest rates for US treasuries, leading to higher mortgage interest rates for whoever out there is crazy enough to venture to buy a house with borrowed money, leading to the probability that there are few of the foregoing, leading to another hard leg down in house values because so few are now crazy enough to buy a house in the face of falling prices – all of this leading to the recognition that we have entered a serious depression…      

This depression will be a classic deleveraging, or resolution of debt. Debt will either be paid back or defaulted on.  Since a lot can’t be paid back, a lot of it will have to be defaulted on, which will make a lot of money disappear, which will make many people a lot poorer.

– Forecast 2010

In spite of the opportunity presented, the PTB will continue the charade of two party politics in 2012. But, unlike with LBJ, there will be absolutely no reason for the PTB not to “go nuclear” on the Democratic Party for the second and FINAL economic meltdown that occurred on “their watch”. Come 2012, the MIC-squared could run a Palin-Bachman ticket and win. Of course, no one will be left standing to fight a “domestic poltical war” with the MICsquared/Wall St. alliance. And, just like the last time, the coverup (that those dirty, hippy, liberals did it) will stick.

That’s my analogy, and I’m sticking to it.

Barack Hussein Obama, meet Lee Harvey Oswald. You are about to become infamous. Please, wake up and smell the coffee.

——-

Appendix 1: Using LHO to implicate Russia and Cuba

As LHO was being set up as an individual scapegoat, so too was the Soviet Union, together with its less powerful ally, Cuba, being portrayed as the evil empire behind the president’s murder…On November 18, the Soviet Embassy in Washington rec eived a crudely typed, badly spelled letter dated nine days earlier and signed by “Lee H. Oswald:” of Dallas. The timing of the letter’s arrival was no accident. Its contents made it a Cold War propaganda bomb whose trigger would be President Kennedy’s assassination. Read in the context of Dallas four days later, the text of the letter seemed to implicate the Soviet Union in conspiring with Oswald to murder the U.S president.

– JFK and the Unspeakable,   p 227

…Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin sent a…telegram…to Moscow. Ira subject was the suspicious Oswald letter received by the Soviet Embassy four days before the assasination. Dobrynin cabled:

“This letter was clearly a provocation: it gives the impression we had close ties with Oswald  and were using him for some purpose of our own…The suspicion that the letter is a forgery is heighted by the fact that it was typed…One gets the definite impression that the letter was concocted by those who, judging from everything, are involved in the President’s assassination.

– JFK and the Unspeakable, p 230

—-

Appendix 2: Obama’s route to national prominence

Continuing with the analogy, about putting patsies in place, its time to compare BHO’s route to the WH with LHO’s route to Dallas. Its easiest to begin when BHO first stuck out from the ordinary.

In 2006 – two years before the Presidential election, when everyone thought the nomination was Hillary’s (HRC) to lose – a whole lot of big money backed this long-shot candidate BHO, and kept backing him for a whole year before the grassroots money came in big. People like Zbigniew Brezizinski (can you say uber-Cold Warrior) signed on to advise him.

Now think back to 2004, when Howard Dean generated $50 M on his own hook: the Powers That Be (PTB) ordered up a media assassination. Is it unreasonable, with hindsight of his actions in 2009, that the PTB gave BHO the money because they KNEW he was little more than a soft-spoken Blue Dog Democrat? Because they knew he would be completely in their pocket? (Remember how we were told that Joe Lieberman being his “mentor” really meant nothing? Gee, then why did Rahm Emmanuel tell Harry Reid to roll over for Traitor Joe, time after time?) The whole “cutout” routine that Rahm is running has tradecraft stamped all over it.

Looking backwards in time from 2006, BHO’s major “accomplishment” was giving a good speech at the 2004 convention – a convention that was supposedly about giving publicity to John Kerry. Wasn’t it just amazing how the in-the-bag-for-Bush corporate media gave him all that airplay for that speech, even as they mercilessly trashed Kerry?

BHO’s other major accomplishment was “winning” his Senate seat in 2004, after the convention. Wasn’t it amazing how his opponent, Jack Ryan (is Tom Clancy writing BHO’s legend?) was sunk by a seamy revelation from his hot, TV star wife in a juicy divorce proceeding?

when Ryan’s Senate campaign began, the Chicago Tribune newspaper and WLS-TV, the local ABC affiliate, sought to have the records released… Jack Ryan has characterized what happened to him as a “new low for politics in America”. According to Ryan, it was unprecedented in American politics for a newspaper to sue for access to sealed custody documents. Ryan opposed unsealing the divorce records of Senator John Kerry during Kerry’s race against George W. Bush in 2004, and Kerry’s divorce records remained sealed.

– Wikipedia

Interestingly, Ryan was sunk so far into the campaign (late June) that BHO wound up running against that hopeless fruitcake, Alan Keyes. A ham sandwich with a “D” behind its name could have won that race.

Just two facts for your consideration: 1) the Chicago Tribune has been a relentless GOP paper for longer than I’ve been alive – and they investigated the REPUBLICAN in the race?; 2)  Jack Ryan became a centi-millionaire by “working” for Goldman Sachs. They really do have both sides bought and paid for.

How many people in America are at all aware of this?

Afghans burn Obama effigy over civilian deaths

By Samoon Miakhail (AFP) – 3 days ago

JALALABAD, Afghanistan – Protesters took to the streets in Afghanistan on Wednesday, burning an effigy of the US president and shouting “death to Obama” to slam civilian deaths during Western military operations.

Hundreds of university students blocked main roads in Jalalabad, capital of eastern Nangahar province, to protest the alleged deaths of 10 civilians, mostly school children, in a Western military operation on Saturday.

“The government must prevent such unilateral operations otherwise we will take guns instead of pens and fight against them (foreign forces),” students from the University of Nangahar’s education faculty said in a statement.

Marching through the main street of Jalalabad, the students chanted “death to Obama” and “death to foreign forces”, witnesses said.

The protesters torched a US flag and an effigy of US President Barack Obama in a public square in central Jalalabad, before dispersing.

“Our demonstration is against those foreigners who have come to our country,” Safiullah Aminzai, a student organiser, told AFP.

“They have not brought democracy to Afghanistan but they are killing our religious scholars and children,” he added.

Man, these people have no appreciation whatsoever.  We come to their country, spend trillions of dollars doing it, just trying to help them.   If only these people would change, dude!

I really don’t see what they’ve got to be angry about.

US forces ‘kill 8 children’ in night raid on village in Afghanistan

UNITED States troops have been accused of dragging innocent Afghan civilians from their beds and shooting them at close range, in a night raid that left ten people dead.

Government investigators said eight schoolchildren had been killed and all but one of the victims was from the same family. Locals said some had been handcuffed before they were killed.

But western military sources insisted the dead were all part of an Afghan terrorist cell responsible for manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have claimed countless soldiers’ and civilians’ lives.

I am outraged, OUTRAGED, that the CIA should have to put up with a few deaths in their ranks, when they have recently been planning raids that kill Afghan children.  

We kill eight of their children, they kill eight of our CIA guys.  

And the CIA just can’t believe it happened.  

Yes, how DARE they.  

Meanwhile, Americans have absolutely no idea that any of this happened.   Except for the CIA guys actually getting whacked.   Just like in Iraq, when the Iraqis dragged those Blackwater guys from their car and burned them and hung their bodies from a bridge, Americans had NO IDEA that that was in response to Abu Ghraib.   None.  And they still don’t.

Meanwhile, CNN continues with its round the clock “TERRORGASM”.  

Yeah, who’s the terrorist again?   We are.  

Happy New Year.    

Sure hope it’s an improvement over 2009.