Tag: Obama

After viewing Richard Hoagland’s hyperdimensional election of Obama I am even more disturbed than I was yesterday.  Richard makes a good case for a connection between the signs of the zodiac, real science, JFK and the hopey

changey election of Obama if you can buy any or all of that.

It is long and starts out sort of boring with Richard not saying much until he gets into those physical constants of accepted science.  Then it gets interesting.

http://video.google.com/videop…

Since I floated the call for a Dump Obama movement, I’ve gotten much helpful feedback.

My original draft, “Time for a Dump Obama movement,” was based on the broad strokes, which I believe are essentially correct.  But I’ve since taken a closer look based both on these responses and from Obama’s contemptuous speech at that infamous $30,000/plate fundraiser.

First, many of the comments, I believe, took my call as something that should be done INSTEAD of what others were already doing.  I was then given alternate approaches, including Vote Green, Dump the Senate, Dump the System, write-in Public Option, Don’t Vote, work the Dem primaries.  Others pointed out that 2012 (when Obama would face a primary challenge) was a long ways off, and I didn’t address what was to be done with the upcoming November elections.  Allow me to address them in no particular order.

I call for a movement.

Not, for instance, an organization or a campaign committee.  People keep saying, you have to have a candidate first.  No, the movement comes first.  Is there any movement already?  That’s a complicated question, since the concept of movement involves a lot of things that can’t be measured like frogs in a pot.  Movements have organizations, members, slogans, actions, demands — even contradictory demands — but they are not reducible to any or all of them.  A movement entails some sense of common identification.  Some sense of motion, of development.  A movement entails some sense of hope, to use a word that has turned to poison but must not be surrendered.

What A Surprise.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Researchers say they’ve found patches of oil believed to be from the BP leak on the Gulf of Mexico sea floor. Some of these are two inches thick.

University of Georgia researcher Samantha Joye (JOY) says she and her colleagues have found oil as much as 80 miles from the Deepwater Horizons well. She says the latest sample was taken early Monday and the oil covered newly dead creatures, such as shrimp and deep-sea worms.

The scientists have collected at least 10 samples from the sea floor, about a mile down. Testing is needed to confirm it is BP oil. But Joye says it has the appearance of recent oil from the busted well, not old oil.

 http://www.nytimes.com/aponlin…

Hmm. Now one of the most ridiculed statements by Matt Simmons (recently dead in a ‘hot tub accident’) was:

….enormous pool of crude is accumulating below the sea floor…

wiki

Which prompted responses from both left and right like this comment from a poster on truthout:

A pool of oil at the bottom of the Gulf? Oil floats, sorry

I guess those people have never heard of dispersants, never saw the video of BP and the US government directly injecting dispersant into the leak, and spraying it from boats and planes on the surface.

Here is is again:  

A couple of weeks ago, in comments on various blogs, I threw out the notion that it was time to start a Dump Obama movement.  It stirred up a variety of responses:

        The move is premature.

        We need to concentrate on further exposing Obama first.

        The masses aren’t yet ready.

        We need to overthrow the entire system, not just Obama.

        Congress is a worthier target.

        Republicans are worse.

As well, a significant number of folks were either intrigued or downright enthusiastic.

Since then, I have seen a growing stream of posts illuminating the extent to which Obama has been initiating right-wing policies which can in no way, shape or form be blamed on his inability to control a Republican-dominated Congress, among the best being Glenn Greenwald’s “The profound mystery of the ‘enthusiasm gap’ “.  Especially interesting was a September 8 piece by FireDogLake’s Jon Walker “Why Should I Care? Leaders Lack Good Reasons to Vote For Democrats – or Against Republicans”, in which he attempts a hardball analysis of the consequences of a Republican takeover of Congress, noting:

I’ve been told for two years a mere 59 Democrats in the Senate are powerless due to the filibuster; by this same logic, we have nothing to fear from Republican gains because they will never be able to get anything through a Democratic filibuster, and even if they do, Obama can veto it … Talk of how a segment of Republican candidates favors privatizing Social Security or eliminating Medicare does demonstrate that they are out of touch with mainstream America, but in all honesty there is zero possibility that either move would come about as a result of Republican action alone, with or without winning narrow control of the House.

At the same time, the din of hysterical “Republicans will eat middle-class babies” articles and comments are becoming a steady chorus, as erstwhile radicals clarify their loyalties.

Original article, Obama’s victory for torturers, by Bill Van Auken via World Socialist Web Site:

A federal appeals court’s dismissal Wednesday of a lawsuit on behalf of victims of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program represents a victory for the Obama administration’s defense of torture and dictatorial executive powers.

There are those who can’t wrap their minds around why the Obama Administration has become a pariah amongst some on the left, or why the Democrats are being dragged down with the President. The fact that the Obama administration would, for all intents and purposes, support torture is one of a myriad of reasons. The failure of the Administration, and by proxy the Democrats in Congress who have done little or nothing to hold the torturers accountable, is disturbing and disgusting. It shows that the Democrats in Washington are, for the most part, mad with power: For them, just as it is with many (if not most) Republicans, the ends justify the means.

In observing end of summer traditions what do I see?  Brand new school buses?  Before Labor Day?

With a big “Thank you” to Glen Ford, executive editor of Black Agenda Report, for permission to post his recent essay here.  

          Black Agenda Report

                    Introduction by Glen Ford

A corporate offensive is rolling down upon us, aimed at wholesale privatization of the public sector. If the Left has learned anything in the last year and a half, it should be that President Obama is Wall Street’s guy, having “delivered the highest return on corporate campaign investment in the history of bourgeois democracy.” In this struggle, the people will be left to their own devices.

Ford’s essay is below the fold: