Mr. Obama isn’t compromising with Republicans—he is a Republican

it's getting harder and harder to witness the charade that is the 2012 election season... the ugly lie of government of the people by the people makes it really difficult to give a shit...

rob urie in counterpunch...

Mr. Obama selected the members of his deficit
commission with a particular outcome in mind—to cut the social programs
long derided by the right as ‘entitlements’ while maintaining tax cuts
for the rich and pushing more of the same neo-liberal reforms that led
to the current bifurcated economy. To be clear, with this commission Mr.
Obama was not defending against the wing-nut economics of the radical
right, he was straightforwardly promoting them.

To assure the outcome that he wanted he loaded his commission with
deficit-hawk Democrats and Republicans. Even so, the commission couldn’t
 come to consensus and the required votes for ratifying its
recommendations weren’t found. Nevertheless, Mr. Obama continued to push
 the most onerous of these recommendations as if consensus had been
found in subsequent negotiations with congressional Republicans.


This tale, generally known to folks who are paying attention to
politics and economics, is retold in response to the ongoing pleas from
liberals, progressives and New York Times columnists that Mr. Obama stop
compromising with Republicans on economic issues. Clearly from his
actions, Mr. Obama isn’t compromising with Republicans—he is a
Republican. And Mr. Obama has demonstrated time and again that he isn’t a
defender against the predations of our economic elite; he is an active
proponent of them. How much more evidence is needed for this to be
clear?

[...]

As is the case in American presidential politics, the
choice is never between ‘good’ candidates. It is always a contest in
lesser-evilism. But at least Mitt Romney is straightforward about whose
interests he represents. Despite the use of seemingly different
rhetoric, Mr. Romney and Barack Obama serve the same masters. Those
putting forward the pretense that there is a great difference between
them are not paying attention to Mr. Obama’s record. Sure Mitt Romney
would be a disaster. Barack Obama already is a disaster. What we need is
a revolution, not more delusion that either candidate would serve our
interests.

maybe succumbing to helplessness and hopelessness is precisely the strategy... people who believe that nothing is ever going to change tend not to be troublemakers...
meanwhile, the barrage of requests for donations to candidates and causes is approaching a fever pitch...

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Obama the neo-con is no longer in the closet

for those of us who've been waiting for obama to rip off his mask and reveal his true self, andrew levine, writing in counterpunch, claims that has now happened...

[W]ith what remains of organized labor finally beginning to fight back, and with the Occupy movements of last fall getting ready to burst forth again, American politics is no longer just an electoral circus in which two semi-established parties huckster their offerings to “moderate” voters. Because Democrats and Republicans are beholden to the same interests and because there are few differences between them that are not merely stylistic or cosmetic, our electoral politics has long been mainly of sociological or even clinical interest; what called for an explanation was why two such likeminded parties became so polarized, why they couldn’t “all just get along.” Now we have more important things to concern us; real politics is back.

But Obama is still relevant, especially in an election year, when our media can be counted on to work overtime covering every facet of the horse race, while ignoring matters of graver consequence. It is therefore timely to reflect on the trajectory of Obama’s governance to this point, and on one rather startling development in the Obama story that has emerged in recent weeks – his newfound willingness to trumpet neoconservative ideas.

Obama, or at least the Obama of term one, will be remembered, above all, for disappointing the hopes of the constituencies that put him in office. He will also be remembered not just for having raised the level of ambient hypocrisy, but for the audacity with which he talks the talk, while walking a very different walk. The more Obama waxes ‘populist,’ the better the rich do, and the more corporate criminality flourishes. The more he speaks of peace, the more the drones fly, and the more his very own Murder Incorporated (Navy Seals and the rest) spread murder and mayhem.

He gets away with it, in large part, because he’s good at fooling some of the people all of the time – not all liberals, but a sizeable number of them. Once it becomes clear to all that the Republicans will nominate their least scary contender, expect those liberals to make fools of themselves big time. No longer can they make a case for Obama by playing up the absurdity of a Trump or Cain or Bachmann presidency. Soon, they won’t have Newt Gingrich to kick around any more either. Expect Rick Santorum too to go the way of what Google says he is — unless, as in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, Romney again miscalculates and underspends.

[...]

But Obama’s readiness of late to signal approval for neoconservative ideology marks a new departure. What makes it all the more astonishing is how unnecessary it is. It is not as if anything is changing at the policy level. In deeds, not words, Obama has always been a practicing neocon; from Day One he could justifiably have declared “we are all neoconservatives now.” But he had too much sense to do anything of the sort — then.

[...]

Unless we have all been wrong about how smart Obama is, it could hardly be because he finds neocon musings intellectually engaging. And we can only hope that he isn’t testing the waters, seeing how much liberals of the Obama-is-the-best-of-all-possible-presidents school will accept. The most likely explanation is that, with an election coming, this is a calculated move on Obama’s part to close what space there is that separates him from Romney, the better to capture the rightward veering center.

Whatever the cause, there are indications of late that Obama has taken on board Kagan’s main contention – that American power is not in decline; that, quite the contrary, we are on the threshold of another glorious American century. The plain implication is that there is no hard crash in the offing, and therefore no need for the empire to change course. American world dominance isn’t over yet, and won’t be for the foreseeable future. And for this, the argument goes, the world can only be grateful.

[...]

But until now he has at least tried to be discreet about it; he was just a closet neocon. Now that is changing. Is it because he feels that the pressure to go to war against Iran is becoming irresistible, and that the wisest course for him, in an election year, is: if you can’t beat them, to join them? All that is clear for now is that the neocon con is back, and that it is happening not just in the Romney campaign – and, for what difference it makes, also in Gingrich’s and Santorum’s — but also, blatantly, at Obama’s instigation.

at least perhaps now, we can step away from the cognitive dissonance that has plagued those of us who have continued to cling to the "hope and change" mantra...

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Obama's team seeks new ways to fire up his base - HAHAHAHAHAHA...!

i think a lot of us have some really good ideas for what those "ways" might look like... first of all, how about demonstrating you give a crap for the common good instead of the corporatocracy...? how about stopping the torture of bradley manning... gee... there's so much you COULD do if you really wanted to...

Barack Obama rode a wave of voter passion in 2008 fed largely by intense dislike of President George W. Bush and the Iraq war, plus excitement among young and minority voters at the notion of electing the nation's first black president.

Now, as Obama cranks up his re-election campaign, all those factors are absent.

The president has many tools, of course, for inspiring and exciting potential voters. But he faces a different landscape, one in which key supporters are disappointed by concessions he has made to Republicans, and discouraged by huge Democratic losses last fall.

Obama acknowledged the challenge last week in Boston. "Somebody asked me, how do we reinvigorate the population, the voter, after two very tough years?" he told Democratic donors. "How do we recapture that magic that got so many young people involved for the very first time in 2008?"

One answer, the president said, is to persuade hardcore liberals to swallow their anger over political compromises the administration reached with Republicans, even when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress.

"swallow our anger"...? puh-l-e-e-e-eze... how friggin' condescending... bite me...

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Bush, Obama, McCain - what's the difference...? It's all manipulation by oligarchy...

chris hedges...

Obama, like Bush and McCain, funds and backs our unending and unwinnable wars. He does nothing to halt the accumulation of the largest deficits in human history. The drones murder thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as they did under Bush and would have done under McCain. The private military contractors, along with the predatory banks and investment houses, suck trillions out of the U.S. Treasury as efficiently under Obama. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus, have not been restored. The public option is dead. The continuation of the Bush tax cuts, adding some $900 billion to the deficit, along with the reduction of individual contributions to Social Security, furthers a debt peonage that will be the excuse to privatize Social Security, slash social services and break the back of public service unions. Obama does not intercede as tens of millions of impoverished Americans face foreclosures and bankruptcies. The Democrats provide better cover. But the corporate assault is the same.

in the article excerpted above, hedges is writing about a recent discussion he had with ralph nader... here's nader talking about the current assault on public employee unions that was the topic of my previous post...

And now wait till you see what they will do to the public employee unions. Part of it is their own fault. They are going to be crushed. Everybody is ganging up on them. You have new class warfare. It is non-unionized lower income and middle class taking it out on the unionized middle-income public employees. It is a classic example of oligarchic manipulation.

nader also points out how our super-rich elites have managed to virtually mute the justified outrage of liberals and progressives at what's happening to our country...

The banishment from the corporate media, Nader argues, has been one of the major contributors to the demoralization and weakening of the left. Protests by the left, which get little national or local coverage, have steadily dwindled in strength across the country. The first protest gets little or no coverage and this leads to movements, as well as the voices of activists, being diminished and finally suffocated.

nader makes what is, imho, an implied but arguable point, namely that protests require media coverage to be effective... while that may to a large extent be true, it seems to me that to not engage in protest and resistance because it won't make the news is just one more way we allow ourselves to be cowed into submission...

nader goes on to conclude with a thought that has been lurking in the back of my own mind for several years...

“The black swan question is whether something will erupt that is rare, extreme and unpredictable,” Nader said. “It is amazing that it hasn’t happened in any pockets of the country. How much more can the oppressed take before they revolt? And can they revolt without organizers? These are the two important questions. You have got to have organizers, and as of now we don’t.”

i think nader's belief in the need for "organizers" reflects his own history more than objective fact... however, i do see the real possibility for a "black swan"... in fact, i see a "black swan" event as more of an inevitability than a mere possibility...

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"Testy" Obama can kiss my ass

"praised by republican opponents and denounced by liberal democrats"... great god almighty... can you even believe this guy...?

Testy Obama fires back at Democrats over tax deal

A testy President Barack Obama on Tuesday expressed frustration at his own Democrats for attacking him over his tax-cut deal with Republicans, who he called uncompromising "hostage takers."

Obama found himself in an unusual position a day after sealing a major tax-cut agreement -- praised by Republican opponents and denounced by liberal Democrats who felt he violated a pledge that helped get him elected in 2008.

obama lost me within six months of him taking office when it became apparent that the common good wasn't a factor in his consciousness...

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You can either be complicit in your own enslavement or you can lead a life that has some kind of integrity and meaning

from grit tv via information clearing house...

"We have a choice," says Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Chris Hedges. "You can either be complicit in your own enslavement or you can lead a life that has some kind of integrity and meaning." Hedges argues for moral responsibility in a world bankrupt of it, and discusses the downfall of what he refers to as the liberal class in his newest book. From World War I to the present, he traces the rise and fall of liberal values, and paints a grim portrait of the future.

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All social and cultural values are now sacrificed before the altar of the marketplace

chris hedges...

Commerce cannot be the sole guide of human behavior. This utopian fantasy, embraced by the tea party as well as the liberal elite, defies 3,000 years of economic history. It is a chimera. This ideology has been used to justify the disempowerment of the working class, destroy our manufacturing capacity, and ruthlessly gut social programs that once protected and educated the working and middle class. It has obliterated the traditional liberal notion that societies should be configured around the common good. All social and cultural values are now sacrificed before the altar of the marketplace.

[...]

Our social and political ethic can be summed up in the mantra let the market decide. Greed is good.

in the documentary, the corporation, a film i use in my mba class, often to the displeasure of my students, has a segment in it where a so-called "authority" not only predicts but actively espouses the privatization of EVERYTHING, every square inch of earth, air and water, out of the belief that "ownership" equates to "stewardship," a belief that has been repeatedly shown to be profoundly misplaced...

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Glenn goes nuclear on Obama

yes, it tends to really piss a person off when condescension and outright dissing are the means used to fend off criticism...

Last night, Barack Obama spoke at a $30,000 per plate DNC fundraising event at the "home of Richard and Ellen Richman, who live in the exclusive Conyers Farm development in Greenwich [Connecticut]'s famed 'back country' neighborhood," and said the following about liberal critics of his presidency:

Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get -- to see the glass as half empty. (Laughter.) If we get an historic health care bill passed -- oh, well, the public option wasn't there. If you get the financial reform bill passed -- then, well, I don't know about this particular derivatives rule, I'm not sure that I'm satisfied with that. And gosh, we haven't yet brought about world peace and -- (laughter.) I thought that was going to happen quicker. (Laughter.) You know who you are. (Laughter.) We have had the most productive, progressive legislative session in at least a generation.

• Continue reading

So, just as Robert Gibbs before him explained (albeit more harshly), if you're one of those people dissatisfied with large parts of the Obama presidency, that's only because you have something wrong with the way you think (you need drug testing/you "congenitally see the glass as half empty"), and because you are saddled with extremely unrealistic, child-like expectations (you're angry that the Pentagon hasn't closed yet/bitter that Obama "hasn't yet brought about world peace: 'I thought that was going to happen quicker' (Laughter.)"). In other words, you're just a petulant, unreasonable, unrealistic, fringe child who doesn't appreciate the greatness and generosity he's given you (h/t Jane Hamsher).

delivering the solid piece he is known for, glenn backs it all up with solid citations...

Expert Consensus: Obama Mimics Bush on State Secrets

Talking Points Memo, April 9, 2009

In Warrantless Wiretapping Case, Obama DOJ's New Arguments are Worse Than Bush's

Electronic Frontier Foundation, April 7, 2009

Obama Upholds Detainee Policy in Afghanistan

Charlie Savage, New York Times, February 21, 2009

Who Are We?

Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong now that Barack Obama is in the White House.

Bob Herbert, New York Times, June 22, 2009

ACLU chief 'disgusted' with Obama

Politico, June 9, 2010

Obama's Home Affordable "HAMP" Program A Failure; Another Huge Wave Of Foreclosures Coming

Business Insider, June 22, 2010

Feingold sees similarities between Bush and Obama on intelligence sharing

The Hill, October 13, 2009

NY Times Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option

Huffington Post, April 6, 2010

U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric

New York Times, April 6, 2010

US used cluster bombs on Yemen civilians: Amnesty

AFP, June 6, 2010

Obama Signs Law Authorizing Suppression of Torture Photos

Washington Independent, October 29, 2009

Axelrod: President remains opposed to same-sex marriage

The Hill, August 5, 2010

Barack Obama orders 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan

BBC, December 2, 2009

so, tell me again just how much we should appreciate all the accomplishments of the obama administration...

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So, we're losers, are we...? The Obama administration shows its true colors...

yeah, it's more glenn...

You may think that the reason you're dissatisfied with the Obama administration is because of substantive objections to their policies: that they've done so little about crisis-level unemployment, foreclosures and widespread economic misery. Or because of the White House's apparently endless devotion to Wall Street. Or because the President has escalated a miserable, pointless and unwinnable war that is entering its ninth year. Or because he has claimed the power to imprison people for life with no charges and to assassinate American citizens without due process, intensified the secrecy weapons and immunity instruments abused by his predecessor, and found all new ways of denying habeas corpus. Or because he granted full-scale legal immunity to those who committed serious crimes in the last administration. Or because he's failed to fulfill -- or affirmatively broken -- promises ranging from transprarency to gay rights.

• Continue reading

But Robert Gibbs -- in one of the most petulant, self-pitying outbursts seen from a top political official in recent memory, half derived from a paranoid Richard Nixon rant and the other half from a Sean Hannity/Sarah Palin caricature of The Far Left -- is here to tell you that the real reason you're dissatisfied with the President is because you're a fringe, ideological, Leftist extremist ingrate who needs drug counseling:

The White House is simmering with anger at criticism from liberals who say President Obama is more concerned with deal-making than ideological purity.

During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough.

"I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested," Gibbs said. "I mean, it's crazy."

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, "They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality."

being categorized as a member of the "professional left" is a new one for me... while i tend to identify more with the left, progressives and liberals much more than i do with the right and conservatives, i am well aware of serious failings in all of those groups... if pushed, i would describe myself more as being passionate about social justice, respect and tolerance for everyone, with a strong bias against greed, fear-mongering and endless war...

glenn continues...

Perhaps one day the White House can work itself up to express this sort of sputtering rage against the Right, or the Wall Street thieves who destroyed the American economy, or the permanent factions that control Washington.

[...]

[I]f anyone needs to be "drug tested," it would be those denying that many of Bush's most controversial policies and actions have been embraced in full by Barack Obama.

i don't know what the obama administration thinks it's doing talking trash like this but whatever support yours truly might have been able to muster for obama's declining fortunes is now gone... may god have mercy on our souls when we wake up the morning after the november election and see what fresh hell has overtaken us...

"professional left," indeed...!

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The rich no longer need the rest of us

i find it somewhat encouraging that a thoughtful, articulate, non-conspiracy-theory-prone, liberal, progressive blogger like digby seems to be leaning more toward what i consider to be a fairly obvious reality...

So the new business of America is looting the coffers of the US treasury. Sounds about right.

she's responding to two items... first, an article in the wsj that offered this interesting perspective...

[Michael Lind] says the wealthy increasingly earn their fortunes with overseas labor, selling to overseas consumers and managing financial transactions that have little to do with the rest of the U.S. “A member of the elite can make money from factories in China that sell to consumers in India, while relying entirely or almost entirely on immigrant servants at one of several homes around the country.”

and second, a post from yves smith at naked capitalism...

The financial crisis resulted in the greatest looting of the public purse in history. While the banksters were the obvious beneficiaries, most of the rest of the rich were carried along with them. The sudden recovery in the fortunes of the wealthy was no accident, but the result of a host of policies to prop up asset values.

while i rarely post excerpts from digby and almost never visit her blog, i've always respected her as one of the less ideological, more open-minded and intellectually honest individuals of the liberal-progressive persuasion... maybe it's time to add her blog to my newsreader...

p.s. nah... digby's gonna hafta wait... i just dropped by her blog and, without going past the first page, i noted posts devoted to glenn beck, howard kurtz, sarah palin, tasers, tea party, andrew breitbart, the catfood commission, newt gingrich, lindsey graham, and michele bachmann... while none of those are without significance in and of themselves, they comprise the essential laundry list of tired liberal-progressive talking points, the same things to be found in blogs from think progress to daily kos, the manufactured diversions so strongly decried by glenn that serve in place of us talking about what really matters... in fact, so strongly do i feel about this, i'm re-posting glenn's perspective...

If you read and write about politics full-time and are thus forced to subject yourself to the political media -- as I am -- what's most striking aren't the outrages and corruptions, but the overwhelming, suffocating, numbing stream of stupidity and triviality that floods the brain. One has to battle the temptation to just turn away and ignore it all. Every day, day after day, is consumed by some totally irrelevant though distracting melodrama: what Sarah Palin wrote on her Facebook page, some "outrageous" snippet of a comment made by John Boehner or Harry Reid, some "crazy," attention-attracting statement from some fringe idiot-figure or TV blowhard that is exploited for superficial partisan gain or distraction value (hey, look over there: I think Michelle Bachmann just said something outrageous!!!!).

nothing against ya, digby, i just think you need to seriously contemplate the larger implications of the statement you made included at the top of this post cuz, trust me, it ain't about sarah, glenn, michele or the tea party... those are just the squashed bugs on the windshield obstructing the view of the 16-wheeler that swerved out of the oncoming traffic lane and is headed right for us...

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Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush

honestly, i hate to put up posts like this... i know chris hedges is completely and totally pissed off at our out-of-control system and the screwing we're taking at the hands of our super-rich, financial and political elites... yes, it ain't pretty, but it's largely true...

We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives.

Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush. He promised us that the transfer of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money to Wall Street would open up credit and lending to the average consumer. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), however, admitted last week that banks have reduced lending at the sharpest pace since 1942. As a senator, Obama promised he would filibuster amendments to the FISA Reform Act that retroactively made legal the wiretapping and monitoring of millions of American citizens without warrant; instead he supported passage of the loathsome legislation. He told us he would withdraw American troops from Iraq, close the detention facility at Guantánamo, end torture, restore civil liberties such as habeas corpus and create new jobs. None of this has happened.

He is shoving a health care bill down our throats that would give hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the private health insurance industry in the form of subsidies, and force millions of uninsured Americans to buy insurers’ defective products. These policies would come with ever-rising co-pays, deductibles and premiums and see most of the seriously ill left bankrupt and unable to afford medical care. Obama did nothing to halt the collapse of the Copenhagen climate conference, after promising meaningful environmental reform, and has left us at the mercy of corporations such as ExxonMobil. He empowers Israel’s brutal apartheid state. He has expanded the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where hundreds of civilians, including entire families, have been slaughtered by sophisticated weapons systems such as the Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of victims’ lungs. And he is delivering war and death to Yemen, Somalia and perhaps Iran.

The illegal wars and occupations, the largest transference of wealth upward in American history and the egregious assault on civil liberties, all begun under George W. Bush, raise only a flicker of tepid protest from liberals when propagated by the Democrats. Liberals, unlike the right wing, are emotionally disabled. They appear not to feel. The tea party protesters, the myopic supporters of Sarah Palin, the veterans signing up for Oath Keepers and the myriad of armed patriot groups have swept into their ranks legions of disenfranchised workers, angry libertarians, John Birchers and many who, until now, were never politically active. They articulate a legitimate rage. Yet liberals continue to speak in the bloodless language of issues and policies, and leave emotion and anger to the protofascists. Take a look at the 3,000-word suicide note left by Joe Stack, who flew his Piper Cherokee last month into an IRS office in Austin, Texas, murdering an IRS worker and injuring dozens. He was not alone in his rage.

“Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours?” Stack wrote. “Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political ‘representatives’ (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the ‘terrible health care problem’. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.”

The timidity of the left exposes its cowardice, lack of a moral compass and mounting political impotence. The left stands for nothing. The damage Obama and the Democrats have done is immense. But the damage liberals do the longer they beg Obama and the Democrats for a few scraps is worse. It is time to walk out on the Democrats. It is time to back alternative third-party candidates and grass-roots movements, no matter how marginal such support may be. If we do not take a stand soon we must prepare for the rise of a frightening protofascist movement, one that is already gaining huge ground among the permanently unemployed, a frightened middle class and frustrated low-wage workers. We are, even more than Glenn Beck or tea party protesters, responsible for the gusts fanning the flames of right-wing revolt because we have failed to articulate a credible alternative.

yep, yep, yep...

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David Sirota makes an excellent point - it's our own "gilded liberals" who are killing health care

hard on the heels of the previous post...

david sirota in truthdig...

To review: With 22,000 Americans dying each year because they lack health insurance, Congress is considering universal health care legislation financed by a surcharge on income above $280,000—that is, a levy almost exclusively on 1-percenters. This surtax would graze just 5 percent of small businesses and would recoup only part of the $700 billion the 1-percenters received from the Bush tax cuts. In fact, it is so minuscule, those making $1 million annually would pay just $9,000 more in taxes every year—or nine-tenths of 1 percent of their 12-month haul.

Nonetheless, the 1-percenters have deployed an army to destroy the initiative before it makes progress.

The foot soldiers are the Land Rover Liberals. These Democratic lawmakers secure their lefty labels by wearing pink-ribbon lapel pins and supporting good causes like abortion rights. However, being affluent and/or from affluent districts, they routinely drive their luxury cars over middle-class economic interests. Hence, this week’s letter from Boulder, Colo., dot-com tycoon Rep. Jared Polis, D, and other Land Rover Liberals calling for the surtax’s death.

Echoing that demand are the Corrupt Cowboys—those like Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who come from the heartland’s culturally conservative and economically impoverished locales. These cavalrymen in both parties quietly build insurmountable campaign war chests as the biggest corporate fundraisers in Congress. At the same time, they publicly preen as jes’ folks, make twangy references to “voters back home,” and now promise to kill the health care surtax because they say that’s what their communities want. Cash payoffs made, re-elections purchased, the absurd story somehow goes that because blue-collar constituents in Flyover America like guns and love Jesus, they must also reflexively adore politicians who defend 1-percenters’ bounty.

That fantastical fairly tale, of course, couldn’t exist without the Millionaire Media—the elite journalists and opinion-mongers who represent corporate media conglomerates and/or are themselves extremely wealthy. Ignoring all the data about inequality, they legitimize the assertions of the 1-percenters’ first two battalions, while actually claiming America’s fat cats are unfairly persecuted.

For example, Washington Post editors deride surtax proponents for allegedly believing “the rich alone can fund government.” Likewise, Wall Street Journal correspondent Jonathan Weisman wonders why the surtax “soak(s) the rich” by unduly “lumping all of the problems of the finances of the United States on 1 percent of (its) households?” And most brazenly, NBC’s Meredith Vieira asks President Obama why the surtax is intent on “punishing the rich.”

For his part, Obama has responded with characteristic coolness—and a powerful counterstrike. “No, it’s not punishing the rich,” he said. “If I can afford to do a little bit more so that a whole bunch of families out there have a little more security, when I already have security, that’s part of being a community.”

If any volley can thwart this latest attack of the 1-percenters, it is that simple idea.

the super-rich elites ain't going down without a fight and, from my perspective, it looks like they're winning handily...

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Are our so-called liberal-progressive friends starting to wake up to the Obama bait-and-switch...?

from the progress report...

For all of the administration's promising early steps to restore transparency and accountability, however recent developments are less encouraging. Some of these stumbling points have been simple failures of implementation; many of the administration's budget transparency websites, for example, publish inconsistent numbers. Other transparency failures, however, suggest a more disturbing trend. Despite promises to end "secret meetings" and restore the White House as the "people's house," the administration has refused to disclose the names of individuals who have visited the White House since Obama took office, while echoing similar excuses by Bush administration officials who wanted to hide secret meetings with energy industry executives. But most disturbing are recent, tenuous invocations of "national security" to cast a shade over government transparency. After the Environmental Protection Agency uncovered nearly four dozen toxic coal ash sites in Tennessee that "could cause death and significant property damage if an event such as a storm, a terrorist attack or a structural failure caused them to spill into surrounding communities," the administration choose to keep the locations of the toxic sites secret from Tennessee residents because of fears that such disclosure could present a "security risk." Similarly, despite earlier disclosure of the infamous torture memos, the Obama CIA has thus far successfully kept secret a comprehensive account of that agency's interrogation practices. Although a heavily redacted version of the report was uncovered by the ACLU, the administration insists that disclosing the full report would endanger national security. Even more alarming, however, is the Obama administration's adoption of Bush's "state secrets" claim in court cases dealing with issues ranging from extraordinary rendition to warrantless wiretapping. The "state secrets" privilege allows the administration to withhold information in a lawsuit or even dismiss the suit altogether if the subject matter of the suit could potentially reveal information that puts national security at risk. In one suit, brought by an Islamic charity challenging the previous administration's warrantless wiretapping program, a federal judge finally threatened sanctions against the Justice Department if it did not comply with an order to turn over a document to the plaintiff's attorneys. Incidents such as these led the New York Times to lament that Obama has "backtracked, in substantial if often nuanced ways, from the approach to national security that he preached as a candidate, and even from his first days in the Oval Office."

the center for american progress, the publisher of this e-newsletter and the weblog, think progress, has lost a great deal of credibility with me over the past few years... i became a regular reader when i saw that they often got the goods on the multiple abuses and outright crimes of the bush administration ahead of the rest of the baying blogosphere... then it started to dawn on me that they too often played the fawning sycophant to anyone and everyone aligned with the democratic party, frequently turning a blind eye to the fact that we have been and are continuing to be just as thoroughly screwed by the democrats as we are by the republicans, the only difference being that, with the dems, there's no sand in the vaseline...

since obama's election and inauguration, they've taken a turn for the worse, spending WAY too much time, imho, vilifying the likes of bill kristol, bill o'reilly, glenn beck, rush limbaugh, karl rove, and the like, a tactic that only serves to give those despicable characters even more air time and exposure than they already have and thus reinforcing their loathsome presence on the american scene... the best strategy in dealing with such obvious dark forces is to not give them the energy of even recognizing them... the dark feeds on attention whether it be positive or negative, and these guys don't deserve to be fed...

so, now our center for american progress friends seem to be waking up to the fact that our dear sunshine-is-the-best-disinfectant president may well be just another stooge - albeit a very well-spoken, intelligent and polished one - for those who so blithely and heedlessly pull our strings along with the strings of most of the rest of the world...

speaking for myself, i believe obama has a good heart and i would prefer to believe that some of what's going on is the result of his bowing to his handlers... otoh, if he IS a good soul, he'd better start showing it or i will be permanently checking out of the hope hotel...

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I have a stupid question

and not by a long shot is this the first time i've asked it...

why, pray tell, when our united states constitution is in tatters, the national - as well as the global - financial system is collapsing before our eyes, and the occupants of the white house, the senior officers of the big banks and investment houses, and the heads of most major transnational corporations have boldly revealed themselves to be criminals, is the news media and, even worse, the liberal, progressive blogosphere, continuing to obsess over john mccain's every senile stumble and the mindless, talking-point, rote recitals of that piece of trailer trash we are being asked to accept as a viable vice-presidential candidate...?

just askin'...

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The truth about the "success" of the Baghdad "surge," the truth you won't see on U.S. news

we seem to have forgotten that the term "surge" was a political talking point designed to minimize what was, in fact, an escalation... now, even the liberals and progressives seem content to call it a "surge" and, worse yet, are passively accepting the bush administration characterization of it as a "success"...

Baghdad, 5 years on (part 1): City of walls



Baghdad, 5 years on (part 2): killing fields



Baghdad 5 years on (part 3): Iraq's lost generation



(thanks to panicbean at daily kos...)

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More on Rev. Wright and the swiftboating of Obama

i knew as soon as i started reading about rev. wright's interview with bill moyers that wright was being set up to bring obama down, part of the overall, national, coordinated strategy to deny obama both the democratic nomination and the white house... after yesterday's national press club speech, i was positive...

is it working...? oh, yeah... just look at these headlines from the wapo's editorial/opinion email summary from yesterday...

Eugene Robinson
Where Wright Goes Wrong
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright has become Barack Obama's cross to bear.

E.J. Dionne Jr.
The Shrinking Election
The 'change' election was supposed to be about ideas. It is losing focus.

George F. Will
A Pastor at Center Stage
It seems clear that Rev. Wright wants to be a central figure in this presidential campaign. He should be.

Richard Cohen
Words Heard Differently
White and black Americans are separated by a common language.

(Washington Post editorial)
The Audacity of Rev. Wright
A tale of a candidate, a pastor and some repugnant remarks

it's forcing obama on the defensive...

Obama strongly denounces former pastor

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama denounced his former pastor in his strongest language to date on Tuesday, saying he was outraged by Rev. Jeremiah Wright's assertions about the U.S. government and race.

"His comments were not only divisive ... but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate," Obama told reporters.

"Whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed as a consequence of this," Obama said.

Obama was forced to address the issue again after another appearance on Monday by Wright to combat criticism of his controversial sermons that have, among other things, suggested the United States deserved some blame for the September 11 attacks and had had a hand in spreading AIDS to blacks.

even the so-called "liberal, progressive" bloggers are piling on...

Wright truly crossed over into cuckoo-land yesterday, saying that our government created AIDS, among other things. That's insane conspiracy talk, and it's race-baiting (white people created AIDS to oppress minorities? - give me a break). Obama really blasted him this time. Good. I appreciate the position Obama is in. It's difficult to see someone you once respected turn into a crazy man. A craven politician, Hillary comes to mind, would turn on that person (or constituency) in a flash. A normal person, a good Christian, would struggle with the fact that the now-crazy man has done good in his life as well. How do you reconcile the two? Politicians don't. Real men - and real Christians - do.

thank god there are at least a few sane souls left out there who know that rev. wright is dead-on in what he's saying...

Jeremiah Wright is 5' 10 '' of tightly-packed explosives. He may be the best public speaker since Martin Luther King. He is bright, passionate, insightful and erudite. When he speaks; the sparks fly and the ground shakes. Yesterday, when Wright took the podium at the National Press Club, he knew he'd be taken to task no matter what he said. He knew that every word he uttered would be twisted by the media to make him look like a hate-monger, or worse, a racist. But Wright faced his critics with dignity and delivered another barnburner. By the end of the speech, everyone in attendance was on their feet applauding wildly for the man the corporate media has chosen to destroy.

so, make up your own minds...

the national press club speech...

Rev. Wright at the National Press Club (1 of 3)



Rev. Wright at the National Press Club (2 of 3)



Rev. Wright at the National Press Club (3 of 3)



followed by the q & a...

National Press Club - Rev Wright Q & A (Part 1 of 3)



National Press Club - Rev Wright Q & A (Part 2 of 3)



National Press Club - Rev Wright Q & A (Part 3 of 3)

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The elites hate us, "the rabble they use as cannon fodder and cash cows"

screw the poor... in fact screw anybody who isn't a pampered heir of the ruling class...

chris floyd, posting in counterpunch, comments on mitt romney's speech to the conservative political action conference on 7 february...

[from Romney's speech]

The threat to our culture comes from within. In the 1960s, there were welfare programs that created a culture of poverty in our country. Now, some people think we won that battle when we reformed welfare. But the liberals haven't given up. At every turn, they tried to substitute government largess for individual responsibility. They fight to strip work requirements from welfare, to put more people on Medicaid, and remove more and more people from having to pay any income tax whatsoever. Dependency is death to initiative, risk-taking and opportunity. Dependency is culture killing. It's a drug. We've got to fight it like the poison it is.

The ignorance -- and inhumanity - of this statement is breathtaking. Think of it: there was no poverty in the United States until "liberals" came along in the 1960s and "created" it with their welfare programs. (Before this "culture of poverty" was created, apparently, the few poor people in America just died off discreetly, like Russians, instead of hanging around a bit longer on government handouts, the way they do now, the shiftless, no-good wretches. Oh yeah, and they breed a lot too, more than white folks.) And even though Bill Clinton (uncredited here, of course, but the elite are well aware of his sterling services) finally drove the stake through the welfare program, these evildoers will still not rest. Just look at what they want to do: "put more people on Medicaid," and "remove more and more people from having to pay any income tax whatsoever." (Wait a minute; I thought red-meat-chomping CPACkers were in favor of people paying no taxes. I guess that only applies to the right sort of people.)

All of this -- especially the stuff about "risk-taking" and "dependency" on government largess -- is pretty rich coming from an avatar of a ruling class that is glutted with pampered heirs of wealth and power who, like Romney, begin their totally risk-free careers at the very top of the ladder, and who are continually fattened with no-bid contracts, kickbacks, tax breaks, subsidies, war profits and myriad other forms of "government largess." But beyond the transparent hypocrisy--and the ludicrous pretense that the "liberals" in today's Democratic Party pose some kind of genuine threat to this cornucopia--Romney's blast is a perfect encapsulation of the elite's hatred for the rabble they use as cannon fodder and cash cows. Let them get sick, let them die, let them languish in poverty, let them lose their homes, let them work three jobs to make ends meet--but by God don't you ever do anything, anything at all, to change the system that produces these chronic inequities and keeps the pampered elite in clover. That's evil. That's "poison." And it won't be allowed.

[...]

The Terror War is simply an extension of the long-held goal of the American elite (and their British "junior partners") to maintain and extend their dominion over the world's natural resources and political arrangements--and the exorbitant profits this dominion produces. There is ample evidence in the historical record of the Anglo-American elite's abiding--and quite open--anxieties on this score, going back for generations. Literally millions of people all over the world have been sacrificed to these ambitions and anxieties, which have not abated but grow more frantic and acute with each passing year.

it's one thing when the elites choose to talk to US... it's quite another when they talk to THEMSELVES...

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Yeah, I like John Edwards, but I also like the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, and accountability

i'm grabbing booman's post in full (booman tribune and daily kos) because i think it has a lot of good things to say... i'm not throwing it up here because i'm endorsing edwards, but i do think booman does a good job of articulating why i've been drawn more in edwards' direction over the past few weeks... i'm still holding out for someone who will directly and forcefully address our constitutional crisis, but, sadly, of the only candidates who have even come close to doing that - dodd, kucinich, and paul - only paul is going to have any momentum (momentum = $$) after tonight, and i simply can't get behind ron paul, at least not now...

even more than explaining the progressive/liberal blogsphere tilt to john edwards, however, booman sets out quite nicely why i have turned almost exclusively to the internet and the blogosphere to stay in touch with what's going on, and also why i started and have doggedly maintained my own weblog for going on three years... besides helping maintain my sanity, it also gives me a voice that, no matter how small and muted it may be, is still the most public voice i've ever had... i reach many people through my teaching and consulting work, but blogging my political views while doing the full-frontal monty by trying to put the puzzle pieces together out in public, is a completely different order of beast...

Why the Blogosphere Went for Edwards

I feel like writing this now, before any caucus or primary results, while my feelings are uninfluenced by events that right now remain uncertain. I don't think the mainstream media or the people that work inside the Beltway really understand the blogosphere at all. We may not fully understand them either, but we have a better grasp of what makes them tick than they have of what makes us tick. We're fighters. Fighting is pretty much all we do.

This whole movement was born of a vacuum. The primary vacuum was in the media. We discovered in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq that the media was not only shutting out our voices, but they were distorting the facts, and the facts were, therefore, going unrebutted. And we discovered that we could publish our voices just as easily as the New York Times could publish the lies of William Safire, Judith Miller, or Dick Cheney. We discovered that we could factcheck the articles appearing in the papers and the warmongers appearing on our television.

We found a truth deficit and set out to provide the truth that was lacking. For those of us that have been doing this for years, we are steeped in this contrast between what is reported and what is true. We know who the liars are. We know who the lazy reporters are. And we know who has been battling with us (Russ Feingold, Chris Dodd) and who has not (Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford). We now have comrades-in-arms...people that we have been standing with day after day after day. And we have enemies that have undermined our mission at every opportunity.

I'm sitting here listening to a speech Barack Obama made yesterday in Coralville, Iowa. He's saying all the right things. Here's an example (paraphrased): 'If you have been steeped in the common wisdom of Washington DC that says it is a good idea to invade Iraq, you can't be the best person going forward to question and change our foreign policy.' And that is exactly right. That explains so clearly what it means to have been in the fight on the side of the blogosphere versus what it means to have been on the sidelines within the consultancies of the Capitol. But Obama hasn't really embraced us. He's gone his own way. And that explains why, in the end, the blogosphere broke heavily for John Edwards.

No, I don't mean people turned their back on Obama because he didn't pay the proper respect to the blogosphere. That isn't what happened. Obama didn't embrace our way of doing things. Worse, he began to use rhetoric we had spent energy to debunk. He went even further. He tossed aside one of our central insights...an insight won through hard experience: we cannot compromise with the Republican Party...we must smash them.

Perhaps because his wife is such an avid reader of blogs, Edwards' campaign tapped right into our zeitgeist. He came out with our insight front and center. You want Edwards' message? Here it is: 'Fuck David Broder, fuck Joe Klein, fuck Chris Matthews, fuck FOX News, fuck Tim Russert, fuck Mitch McConnell, fuck Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Defense. We don't need them. They won't negotiate in good faith. They're stacking the deck against us. And we can beat them by telling the truth and getting organized.' That's Edwards' message, and that is the message we have internalized both through our successes and our failures.

What's funny is that Obama is saying many of the same things, in his own way. The policy differences between Edwards and Obama are minimal. But Obama's tone deaf to the blogosphere. And, as a result, the blogosphere didn't trust him. Take Armando:

...we do not criticize Obama's political style on aesthetic grounds; we criticize his style because we think it will not work to actually EFFECT CHANGE. We believe that despite his being touted as the change candidate, his political style is the one LEAST likely to achieve progressive policy change.

His 'style' will be ineffective. Why did so many of us conclude this? It's because we have watched Tom Daschle, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi try to negotiate with the Republicans (in the minority, the majority, no matter) and it does not work. We have watched the Dems talk tough and then back down time and time again. We're done with conciliation and we don't believe bipartisanship is possible without first crushing the Republican Party down to a stump.

Ironically, Obama might be the perfect candidate to provide the kind of crushing victories this November that will make true bipartisanship possible again. I definitely think that is a possibility. In fact, I feel his chances are strong enough that I can't endorse Edwards over Obama. I do hope Edwards wins in Iowa, but not necessarily because I prefer him to Obama. More than anything, I want Edwards' style to be vindicated. I want partisanship and combativeness to be rewarded. And I want Clinton/Lieberman/Ford/Carper/Carville/Begala/Penn to lose.

In any case, this is the best I can do to express why the blogosphere went for Edwards. None of the candidates were going far enough on policy, but at least Edwards was representing our fighting natures. And that, in the end, was decisive.

now, if somebody would PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE step forward and start addressing the constitutional crisis, the rule of law, and accountability...

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Fred Thompson: If you're scared of liberals, vote for me

oferchrissake, fred... go wash your damn pick-up truck and stop blathering about idiocy...

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson said Saturday that election of a Democrat to the White House in 2008 would open the way for a welfare state where bigger government, higher taxes and defense cutbacks sap the country's economic and military strength.

"Our country is at a crossroads," Thompson told several hundred people at a rally at a community clubhouse.

"We know that the most liberal element of the Democratic Party has taken control of the Democratic Party, and if they win this next election we're going to go down the road of a welfare state," he said.

After warning of a government that gets "bigger and bigger," he said "I don't think the American people are going to turn the keys to this country over to the most left-wing part of a left-wing party next year."

"We've got to make sure that doesn't happen," he said.

O.M.G...! the "most LIBERAL element of the democratic party..." grab the children, turn off the lights, close the blinds, don't make any noise at all... maybe they'll go away...

what must go on in a brain like that...?

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It's all because liberals HATE George W. Bush!

another home run by tom tomorrow...

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