Obama: "I am a New Democrat"

Having noted the very close links between the financial oligarchy and the Obama regime, it should also be noted that the political right/religious fundamentalists/racists are praying for the death of the US President. Their numbers on Facebook are now 1,000,000.

Feel the hate

How very clever, in a non-engaged, left liberal, fashionable manner.

Obama's Betrayal of the Working Class

http://www.observer.com/2010/opinion/obamas-betrayal-working-class

"As voters ponder the curious failure of the ruling Democratic Party even to pursue meaningful economic relief for millions of desperate and jobless Americans, it might be useful to recall certain passages from President Obama's best selling campaign manifesto, The Audacity of Hope..."

As Krugman points out in the Sept. 19 NYTimes:

"The rage of the rich has been building ever since Mr. Obama took office. At first, however, it was largely confined to Wall Street. Thus when New York magazine published an article titled "The Wail Of the 1%," it was talking about financial wheeler-dealers whose firms had been bailed out with taxpayer funds, but were furious at suggestions that the price of these bailouts should include temporary limits on bonuses. When the billionaire Stephen Schwarzman compared an Obama proposal to the Nazi invasion of Poland, the proposal in question would have closed a tax loophole that specifically benefits fund managers like him.

Now, however, as decision time looms for the fate of the Bush tax cuts - will top tax rates go back to Clinton-era levels? - the rage of the rich has broadened, and also in some ways changed its character.

For one thing, craziness has gone mainstream. It's one thing when a billionaire rants at a dinner event. It's another when Forbes magazine runs a cover story alleging that the president of the United States is deliberately trying to bring America down as part of his Kenyan, "anticolonialist" agenda, that "the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s." When it comes to defending the interests of the rich, it seems, the normal rules of civilized (and rational) discourse no longer apply."

The guy's up against not only privilege and mainstream racism, he also has to contend with impatience on the part of the self-styled progressive...who, of course, can't be bothered with reading anything mainstream.

Do you suppose that if Obama decided to get out of the Middle East entirely and to cease supporting Israel, financially or politically, that the GOP would continue to stay out of his way?

I'm excluding the "blank cheque" bailouts because those did come with strings, though perhaps not sufficient strings to satisfy some.

"Do you suppose that if Obama decided to get out of the Middle East entirely and to cease supporting Israel, financially or politically, that the GOP would continue to stay out of his way?"

I'm trying to imagine in a land of nutbars and ignorance, a candidate for president successfully laying that out for them.

George and NDPP, no ironic or "straight" racism, FFS. Stop it now.

Absurd it is. It's socialism for fat-cat Wall Street bankers. $13 trillion dollars worth and counting.

Thousands Rally in Karachi For Aafia Siddiqui, Burn Obama Effigy

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/301774

"In a recent interview, Siddiqui's sister pleaded to the US President for her release. Siddiqui is being held in a prison facility in Carswell, Texas. It is believed that it's the most brutal prison in the US and the world...In September, Aafia Siddiqui, a neuroscientist and president of the Institute of Islamic Research and Teaching was found guilty with the intent of murdering her US interrogators in Afghanistan. The jury handed Siddiqui an 86-year prison sentence.."

Obama Free Aafia Siddiqui

http://www.freeaafia.org/

Obama Free Leonard Peltier

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/obama-free-leonard-peltier/

Obama - no difference president..

No Recovery Under Rule of Bankers - by Glen Ford

http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/no-recovery-under-rule-bankers

"When the history of the era is written, Barack Obama's term in office will be remembered as the period when Wall St. achieved its definitive conquest of the American state, thus depriving the society of the means to avoid economic and social disaster...

So what do you prefer - poverty or an uprising? Those are the only choices."

Obama's Afghanistan Review: A Whitewash of a Disastrous Occupation

http://www.alternet.org/world/149321/obama's_afghanistan_review%3A_a_whitewash_of_a disastrous_occupation/

"According to the Obama administration, nothing can happen in the US war in Afghanistan that doesn't mean good news..."

   "Obama."outdid George Bush by exceeding his harshness, lawlessness ... targeting middle class households for destruction ..." Clearly framed by a conservative mind. As George Lakoff says (p. 114) ..."Distinguish between ordinary conservatives and nasty ideologues." Nothing "ordinary" in that account of the pres., as any psychiatrist would agree.

M. Spector wrote:

Yet George still has trouble distinguishing valid left criticism from the ravings of the tea party. Not even George Lakoff would be so confused.

[humor]

Well a barking fruit bat is a barking fruit bat... dosn't really matter which cave it cames from.

[/humor]

If the (USA) left has all the answers to our problems here in the USA it seems they are having a hard time articulating it to the general population. One of the biggest problems I see with your leftist brothers and sisters in the USA is they snark down on everyone who isn't in your camp. To many of us here in the USA the tea party and you guys are opposites of not the same coin but maybe more like the opposite on a six sided dice; when it's rolled you or your opposite don't always show up but you're there none the less.

Someone here on another thread posted I deserved Obama and I'm quite sure they meant it as a snide insult. Well none taken, you damn right I deserve Obama; I voted for him. There are more political choices than the left or the tea party in the USA. The fact that YOU can't see the difference between Obama and Bush and the Democrats and the Republicans is on you, not me.

How Obama Protected Bush

http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/368-wikileaks/4...

"It was three months into Barack Obama's presidency, and the administration-under pressure to do something abut alleged abuses in Bush era interrogation policies - turned to a Florida senator to deliver a sensitive message to Spain: Don't indict former George W Bush's legal brains trust for alleged torture in the treatment of war on terror detainees.."

When Lawyers Against War approached our own 'New Democrat' leader, Jack Layton, for his assistance in advancing a war crimes action against George W Bush during his first visit here, LAW's Joyce Davidson was told by Layton's office that Layton would "entertain no further correspondence on this issue". Seems like it's not just the Spanish that are willing to protect US war criminals. Of course, as a result of our involvment in Afghanistan, we have some of our own as well.

Who needs innuendo when you've got tons of actual facts?

2010: The Best and the Worst  -  by Justin Raimondo

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/12/28/2010-the-best-and-the-worst/

"Speaking of the King and his Court, the Interventionist of the Year award can only go to Barack Obama, who has managed to keep the US involved in more major simultaneous military conflicts than any President in US history - and is already seeking to break his own record...

He is an ideological chameleon who managed to shut down the antiwar movement by adopting their colors and lulling much of the 'progressive' antiwar left to sleep. And what he didn't shut down by persuasion he's intent on shutting down by means of legal persecution as the arrests of antiwar activists in Minneapolis, Chicago and North Carolina, and the grand jury investigation into their activities makes all too clear.."

You are into wishful thinking there, Josh, and have taken to defending the Republicans in your blind and desperate need to come onside with the intellectual organ grinders.

You disagree with Krugman, of course:

"How naive we were. We should have realized that the modern Republican party is utterly dedicated to the Reaganite slogan that government is always the problem, never the solution. And, therefore, we should have realized that party loyalists, confronted with facts that don't fit the slogan, would adjust the facts...what we learned...is what happens when an ideology backed by vast wealth and immense power confronts inconvenient facts. 

"And the answer is, the facts lose."

And hereabouts, there's no attempt to use facts, just linkage to like-minded dreamers. 

George Victor wrote:

You are into wishful thinking there, Josh, and have taken to defending the Republicans in your blind and desperate need to come onside with the intellectual organ grinders.

You disagree with Krugman, of course:

"How naive we were. We should have realized that the modern Republican party is utterly dedicated to the Reaganite slogan that government is always the problem, never the solution. And, therefore, we should have realized that party loyalists, confronted with facts that don't fit the slogan, would adjust the facts...what we learned...is what happens when an ideology backed by vast wealth and immense power confronts inconvenient facts. 

"And the answer is, the facts lose."

 

And hereabouts, there's no attempt to use facts, just linkage to like-minded dreamers. 

May it please the court, m'lud, I give you Exhibit "A".

Jon Stewart was able to shame Republicans in the senate from dropping their opposition to a bill aiding 9/11 responders.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/business/media/27stewart.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Obama, either out of his usual conflict aversion or out of political obtuseness, didn't issue a peep about this. Can you imagine what Stewart would have done to the Republicans playing Ebeneezer Scrooge to the unemployed on the eve of Christmas? They would have similarly folded.

The whole business about unemployment benefits and tax cuts was an after-the-fact excuse dreamed up by Obama's spinmeisters, and turned into myth by his defenders.

Thumbing through George Lakoff's "don't think of an elephant", I can't find a single reference about what to do for "progressives" -in this "The Essential Guide for Progressives" - who are determined to put down the party of Howard Dean and Robert Reich, people who confront the reality of U.S.politics.

Small wonder the Tea Party's success with the "average masses" who, like BDC, don't get off on theory that bends reality to fit.

What Progressives must do, George, is take a page from the right wing. By convincing their base that the path to salvation lies through voting against their own best interests. Thus, a person concerned about the economic depression, the endless expanding wars, the capture of the treasury by the bankers, and the likelyhood of permanent unemployment must first think "What can I, a single poor person, do to ensure the political fortunes of Barack Obama and the Democrat party, for their success is the most important thing, and indeed the only thing we can achieve."

If they complain, then surely the are just racists and haters who don't understand that their personal sacrifice for the Greater Good of President Obama is necessary and just.

Normally I'd ignore you George but your Obama apologism is getting just a little too thick here.    Fox News and the Republican rightwing actually represents only a slice of the 'average' populace, even if most of us white guys aren't very eager to deal with our genocidal history.   The majority of Americans actually support pulling out of their imperialistic wars and would have prefered him increasing minimum wage instead of bankrupting the nation bailing out corrupt bankers.  And I doubt anyone outside of the Networks are asking to have their privacy and constitution violated, or be eligible for assassination on the whim of their chief executive officer. 

The blank refusal of so-called liberals to deal with the uncomfortable fact that they actually had broad public support to enact some genuinely progressive counter-measures, when they had a full majority in congress, only speaks to the illiteracy of our elites.   You really should try reading a bit more yourself. 

ICH today: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of  civilization, it expects
what never was and never will be". -Thomas  Jefferson"

When you're attacked from both the left and the right, you know you must be doing everything wrong.

Barack, Rahm and A Symphony of Corruption:(vid)

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/1011.html

Wayne Madsen muckraking on the Chicago-DC merry-go-round

George Victor wrote:

The health bill vote takes place in the U.S.Congress today. Just in case it fails, and the cry goes up that Pres. Obama has failed again, it would seem that his colour is central to the outcome. As Joan Walsh describes the emerging scene, in Salon today:

"So I'm having a hard time tonight trying to believe almost uniformly white tea partiers are anything other than a racist, right-wing reaction to the election of an African American president who brings with him feminists and gays (even if he doesn't do as much for them as they would ideally like). I'm having a hard time seeing the tea partiers as anything other than the spawn of George Wallace racism - the movement Pat Buchanan bragged to me that Richard Nixon made his own. Of course, in that same "Hardball" segment, Buchanan denounced me for condescending to and "demonizing" the tea partiers. I still find that rich: I grew up in lower middle class Long Island, with a first-generation Irish father, going to public schools and universities, while the wealthy Buchanan grew up in Washington D.C. with professionals as parents and attended Georgetown University. How is he the supposed working class troubadour while I'm somehow emblematic of the pointy-headed liberal elite?

 

"Democrats are lame about fighting stupid class-based slurs like that, which is part of why this health care fight has dragged on and become so bitter. But I think a lot of Democrats were horrified by the ugliness they saw today, and I'm hoping that helps pass health care reform on Sunday."

Like the lady said.  And this type can be found on both sides of any border.  You play to the average masses from your elite  (economic) catbird perch.