Harper's Washington editor is quitting to go to work for George Soros and his candor is unusual.  Read on for some unvarnished truth about the Obama regime, the corporatocracy, and the bullshit that is our political class.

Signing Out

By Ken Silverstein

This is my last post here at Washington Babylon and I’ll be leaving my position as Harper’s Washington Editor (I will remain as a contributing editor to the magazine). I’ve received a fellowship at the Open Society Institute and will also be leading special investigations at Global Witness, which has offices in London and in Washington. My work for both will focus on long-term international investigations.

Here we are seventeen years later and there’s a young, new Democratic president who replaced George Bush and promised to reform politics and be a transformative leader. Backed by huge majorities in Congress….

I had low expectations for Obama as I always viewed him as a fairly conventional insider. But by any measure, his presidency has been a huge disappointment. It’s true that Obama inherited a terrible economy, but his policies were timid — which is no surprise given that his economic team was composed almost entirely of the same bankers and Wall Street insiders who paved the way for and profited from our bubble economy. There are now 43.6 million Americans living in poverty and more than 15 million out of work; that’s a scandal, and when there’s a Democrat in the White House and the party has ample majorities in Congress, it’s not credible to blame everything on obstructionism by the Republicans.

Joe Biden and Robert Gibbs have recently been attacking the “left” and saying that it doesn’t appreciate all the great things the administration has done. For my part, I have lived in Washington long enough to have realistic hopes; for example, given political realities, passing a single payer bill was not going to happen. But I also don’t think it’s my job, as a journalist or a citizen, to blindly repeat the mantra of the administration (and its supporters in the blogosphere), that we should “not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Fine, but let’s also not treat the administration’s health care plan as a grand achievement. The bill is widely unpopular, and not only because of the hyperbolic attacks on it by Republicans and Fox News. It’s unpopular because it’s a terrible piece of legislation.

The current GOP is truly a scary party, but if not for that it would be impossible to care about the midterm elections. When you’re reduced to rooting for soulless hacks like the current Senate majority leader—and he’s typical of today’s Democrats—you’ve lost something fundamental at the core of your humanity.

Anyway, I’m not trying to suggest that journalism isn’t an admirable profession. (And anyone who thinks otherwise should look at the amazing work that the Los Angeles Times has done on the situation in Bell, California.) As the media landscape changes, non-profits and foundations are increasingly coming forward as the institutions willing to underwrite intensive investigative journalism. At Global Witness I’ll continue working under that admirable, sustainable model that I’ve been proud to be a part of at Harper’s, in whose pages readers will see me again very soon.

Many of you recall the extremely long post I kept up for months titled:

How does all that Hope and Change taste now? (Update 47)

Just because I stopped updating that post doesn't mean Obama has cleaned up his act.  If anything, his administration has gotten worse.  Just because you don't hear about it on the local news, here in the OS bubble or on cable, it doesn't mean he has stopped being a war criminal, eroding the Bill of Rights and catering to his corporate masters.  The swindle continues:

This week the Obama administration declared that it has to right to kill you, and that you have no right to know why it wants to kill you or prove that it should not, because killing you involves state secrets.

and

"Obama is arguing the executive has the power to execute American citizens without a trial, without even so much as an airing of the charges against them, and that it can do so in complete secrecy, with no oversight from any court, and that the families of the executed have no legal recourse." 

and

Steal From the Poor, Give to the Rich: The Redistribution of Wealth. "The United States is undergoing a great redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. President Obama and the Congress have done nothing to alter this trend..."

and

"They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking... They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago." - Carlin

and

Obama says "Fight in this election for civil liberties!" then promptly returns to violating civil liberties...

and

FBI Raids Homes of Antiwar Activists in Chicago and Minneapolis.

and

Army censors photos of Afghan corpses in ‘kill-for-sport’ trial 

and

Obama's drone war: “The lava of anger and hatred is flowing in the tribal areas. . .clearly, the drone attack strategy is not winning people over. It is only increasing hatred against the US and now more people are taking up arms.”

and

Predator drones kill seven people across the Pakistan border and then come back later to bomb the funeral.

and

The Obama administration is pushing for new wiretap laws that will allow them to collect anything and everything you do on the Internet. Including any calls you make on Skype, any updates on your Facebook page, and any emails you send. Welcome to Obama's police state. 

 and

Obama's FDA won’t allow food to be labeled free of genetic modification - Monsanto owns the government. 

and I could go on and on and on, because Obama's failures go on and on and on.  There is little "liberal" about him.  He is a mass murderer like most of the presidents before him and we must never forget that truth.