Barack Obama's second inauguration

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and you can't make everyone happy.

Could the influence peddling get any more blatant?

Quote:

ExxonMobil: Over $260,000 to Obama’s Inauguration Committee

According to a scoop by The Hill, ExxonMobil contributed $250,000 to the Inaugural Committee. Additionally, ExxonMobil attorney Judith Batty has given the Committee $10,750, according to the Center for Responsive Politics‘ OpenSecrets.org. Thus, ExxonMobil has given the Committee a grand total of over $260,000.

ExxonMobil earned a profit of $41.1 billion in 2011 and in the first three quarters of 2012 earned a profit of $34.92 billion, well on pace to surpass its 2011 profit margin.

Some mathematical context is warranted. This means ExxonMobil earned $9,935 per minute in the first three quarters of 2012, $596,107 per hour and $14.3 million per day in profits.

Despite these oligarchic-type bottom lines, ExxonMobil doesn’t even pay its fair share in taxes, as ThinkProgress explained in a March 2012 article:

Citizens for Tax Justice reported Exxon paid only 17.6 percent taxes in 2010, lower than the average American, and a Reuters analysis using the same criteria estimates that Exxon will pay only 13 percent in effective taxes for 2011. Exxon paid zero taxes to the federal government in 2009.

In practice, this means that ExxonMobil actually pays less in taxes by percentage than an average Middle Class American family.

For a corporation with financial wealth of this magitude and one that, to boot, evades paying taxes, $260,000 is truly a “drop in the bucket.” And yet in a political system favoring those who can “pay to play,” it’s a true game-changer in terms of gaining direct access to the Administration.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/21/exxonmobil-donates-260000-to-obam...

Good!

The GOP warmongers can go screw themselves.

Barack Obama accused of giving partisan inauguration speech

Senator John McCain among Republicans blasting US president for failing to offer a hand across the political divide

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/22/obama-inauguration-speech-re...

Brachina wrote:

Not offering a hand? Obama already handed over his soul, now they want his hand too? Obama's been an aweful president, I see nothing to look forward to during his presidency.

Agreed!

Our Prime Minister (Harpo) actually yearns to be a serious player in the international Military - Industrial Complex. 

POTUS loves his guns, apparently...

Socialist Feminist wrote:

lagatta wrote:

I think that if you accept to be POTUS, you have basically sold your soul to the "Military-Industrial Complex". But I think the Republican would have been even worse, especially in terms of domestic issues (abortion access, LGBT rights etc). 

Thanks lagatta.  And I agree, the Republicans are worse. Obama's the lesser of 2 evils. 

Where it concerns the death machine that is the USA, does it really matter if one is a small or large cog?  There's something offensive about the term 'lesser evil' in this context.

Let's hope Obama's State of the Union address pays more than lip service to climate change. The devil is in the details. Until they're fleshed out, I'll reserve judgement about 'evil' speculations.

Carp on Obama all you want, but too bad, he just doesn't control the Congress. He is however our best chance for some concrete solutions to ending or at least reducing war, and ending or at least reducing poverty, etc.

U.S. power is in decline. Here’s how it needs to deal with it: Burman

America’s power is in decline and it's necessary for its leadership to manage that decline in the best interests of the U.S, its people and the world.

America’s “military-industrial complex,” as U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower described it in his farewell address in 1961, is in full-throated terror. The world is about to end — or at least their inflated, overly protected and dangerous part of it. But I suspect that Eisenhower, were he still alive, would respond to their agony with a brush-off: “My fellow Americans, it is about time.”

Across-the-board cuts to the bloated U.S. military budget — variously described as “catastrophic,” “draconian” and “legislative madness” — will go into effect in two weeks unless Washington’s warring Republican and Democratic leaders come to a compromise on spending and revenue.

It is timely to recall Eisenhower’s warning in 1961. He worried about the growing power of the “military-industrial complex” and the impact of the defence industry’s quest for profits on foreign policy. As Aaron B. O’Connell, who teaches history at the United States Naval Academy, wrote in The New York Times last November: “(Eisenhower) warned that unending preparations for war were incongruous with the nation’s history (and) cautioned that war and war making took up too large a proportion of national life.”

Those prophetic words were spoken 52 years ago by one of America’s most honoured military leaders. Earlier this week, in his state of the union speech, President Barack Obama seemed to echo that theme, perhaps unintentionally. Obama never once mentioned the words “Iraq” or “war on terror.” He talked about ending the war in Afghanistan and focused on the need to “fix” America, rather than “fix” the world.

Most Americans see themselves as “peacemakers” who are committed to bringing their sense of “democratic values” to all. It is a comforting self-image shaped by a conceited belief in American “exceptionalism.” But much of the developing world, particularly after the disastrous decade that followed Sept. 11, see the United States as mostly “war makers” — with a self-serving and hypocritical commitment to true “democracy.” It is this crucial contradiction where change, finally, may be occurring.

In much of the current alarmist debate about the threats to “America’s national security,” several facts have been lost in the shuffle.

The United States has a staggering military budget, which has ballooned since Sept. 11. It is 20 per cent of the entire federal budget and now significantly more than Medicare. In 2011, the U.S. spent more on its military that the next 13 nations combined. That will still be true, even if the latest round of cuts — roughly 10 per cent — is imposed. The cuts would leave the military budget at roughly the same level as it was in the latter years of the Bush administration.

What is also revealing is what Americans think. This reality is largely ignored in the debate among America’s chattering classes. A national survey by the Stimson Center revealed that most American voters — including Republicans — favoured budget cuts to the military that would be far greater than has currently been proposed.

It is ironic that these significant budget cuts to the U.S. military, if they go ahead, will begin in early March when Americans mark the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Many might see that as a historic transition point. In 2003, American imperial power seemed to be at its height. Now, after the collapse of that adventure, America’s power is in decline and it is necessary for its leadership to manage that decline in the best interests of the United States, its people and the world at large.

In 2003 at Yale University, former president Bill Clinton said the U.S. should be realistic about how the future will unfold, and act in partnership with other nations: “(The U.S.) is the biggest, most powerful country in the world now. . . But if you believe that we should be trying to create a world with rules and partnerships and habits of behaviour that we would like to live in when we’re no longer the military, political, economic superpower in the world, then you wouldn’t (act unilaterally).”

But this must be done by stealth. No active American politician can acknowledge that this 21st century will not be America’s century, and that includes Obama. But his recent actions suggest he has listened to Clinton’s words.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/02/16/is_us_moving_to_fix_itself_...

Got Tyranny?

Quote:

Glenn Greenwald   
guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 February 2013 14.46 GMT   

Obama officials refuse to say if assassination power extends to US soil

The Justice Department "white paper" purporting to authorize Obama's power to extrajudicially execute US citizens was leaked three weeks ago. Since then, the administration - including the president himself and his nominee to lead the CIA, John Brennan - has been repeatedly asked whether this authority extends to US soil, i.e., whether the president has the right to execute US citizens on US soil without charges. In each instance, they have refused to answer.
...

The US policy of killing or imprisoning anyone it wants, anywhere in the world, is immoral and wrong in equal measure when applied to US citizens and foreign nationals, on US soil or in Yemen and Pakistan. But application of the power to US citizens on US soil does raise distinct constitutional problems, creates the opportunity to mobilize the citizenry against it, and poses specific political dangers. That's why it is sometimes discussed separately.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/22/obama-brennan-paul-a...

Obama Administration Claims Right To Assassinate Citizens Within US

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/07/kill-m07.html

"According to the Obama administration, the president has the right to assassinate Americans citizens within the United States, without charges or any legal process. This claim, contained in a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder, constitutes the most far-reaching abrogation of constitutional rights and is aimed at establishing the pseudo-legal framework for military rule..."