Barack Obama is looking more and more like America’s Neville Chamberlain.
Once more, a craven, snivelling, abject surrender is pronounced a “victory.”
“See, the Tea Party members are reasonable people. If you just abandon the interests of the American people, lick their boots, and capitulate to 95% of their belligerent crackpot demands, you can work out a compromise with them! After all, we kept 5% of our needs!” What a fool the Obama Administration is if they think this is the last of their surrenders. It has only just begun The right-wing Republicans now know for certain that if they just stonewall long enough, the Democrats will cave completely.
What remains of the social safety net will now die “the death of a thousand cuts,”–not immediately and suddenly, but starting in six months from now, little by little.
The boxing phrase “taking a dive” keeps coming back to me when I think of Barack Obama’s presidency a man whose election I worked fervently for.
I’ve been reviewing some quotes from others and I’m going to post them here, as food for thought:
“The spectacle of millionaires debating how to eliminate services to the poor and middle class is by now such a commonplace that it hardly deserves comment” –Roger Hodge, on Salon.
Robert Reich notes: “his [Obama's] inability or willingness to use the bully pulpit to tell Americans the truth and mobilize them for what needs to be done….never once does he tell the American people why reducing the deficit has become his number one economic priority. Americans can only conclude that Republicans are correct–that diminishing the deficit will somehow revive economic growth and restore jobs….there is no leadership.” (in his post “The Empty Bully Pulpit” on HuffPo)
Paul Krugman: “The GOP never cared about the deficit…[only] in the dissolution of the welfare state.”
“Outrageous behavior demands extraordinary responses.”
“By failing to do enough when he had political capital, he [Obama] lost that capital and now we’re stuck.”
“And everyone who preached bipartisanship, who has called for a meeting of the minds on this subject, is either a fraud or a chump.”
Rick Perlman: “When one side breaks the social contract and the other sides makes a virtue out of never calling them out on it, the liar always wins. When it becomes ‘uncivil’ to call out liars, lying becomes free.”
“Throughout history, people have been duped again and again into believing that enormous inequality in the distribution of wealth was necessary for their own welfare.” Marvin Harris, anthropologist.
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
Ingrid Ricks
Deborah Méndez Wilson
Algis Kemezys
Jan Sand
Julie Morse
Miguela Holt y Roybal
Salon.com
Comments
-R-
And the people who spend most of their time aiding them, by making their victory a certainty...are going to be much more at fault than the one individual in the White House.
The country deserves what it is going to get.
But do keep on railing against Obama...withhold all your support...suggest people vote for his opponent, or waste their vote on a third party, or stay at home and not even offer a vote.
Help the horde massing at the gate.
Or wake up and smell the coffee!
Your choice.
Frank, I don't know how you can overlook the stunning and repeated failures of leadership on the part of the Obama administration right from the start. This was apparent no later than February of 2009. If they fail in the next election, the Dems will have no one to blame but themselves. I think it may have been Eugene V. Debs who said, "Remember when you vote for the lesser of two evils that you are still voting for evil."
With all the respect in the world, that was my point…that the “Dems” are going to lose this next election (in my opinion, big time) because they simply will not look the situation squarely in the face—the way Obama is doing, by the way!
The entire congress could not get the tea partiers to budge one inch. The combined might of all the Democrats in the House and the Democratic majority in the Senate…were unable to get one tiny concession from these people; not one tiny iota of a tax hike on billionaires; not one tiny adjustment to the tax code to extract a penny from corporations paying not one penny.
Nobody could do it…not Obama…not anyone.
Do you honestly not see that the political climate right now is so toxic that NO ONE could get that kind of thing?
Why are Democrats still savaging Obama and helping the opposition to maximize their victory?
Really…I just do not understand you people? I try…I really try. But I do not understand why you cannot see that all this hand-wringing and blame-placing and mocking of Obama is worsening the situation for you…and our country…rather than being of ANY USE WHATSOEVER.
Do it if you will. All I can do is to point out that it is counterproductive to your cause. YOU have to open your eyes and see it.
Consistently, like the fool on the hill, you refuse to address legitimate claims like these:
Obama gave $800 billion of TARP to Wall Streeters, who then declared $6 billion in bonuses.
Obama has more troops overseas than when he took office, after promising to bring the troops home.
Obama not only extended tax cuts for the rich, but also reduced the estate taxes, benefitting the 0.6% of the rich enormously.
Obama has already signaled that he intends to lower the corporate tax rate instead of raising it.
Obama is planning to raise the retirement age, costing each of us $63,500 in retirement benefits!
Large corporations are earning record profits while unemployment is 9.1%.
Obama has consistently appointed Wall Streeters to his economic advisory team instead of voices of labor like Robert Reich.
Obamacare benefits the big insurance and pharmaceuticals, and its provisions for pre-existing conditions do not take affect until 2014.
Our country is lapsing into another recession, or a depression, and Obama has not proposed anything to avert such.
obama inherited two wars, now we have SIX ongoing (not counting other illegal covert ops, elsewhere).
Furthermore: "Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20."
You have consistently and obstinately refused to EVER respond to even a single one of these matters in your pig-headed keep your head in the sand manner.
When you're ready to respond substantively, you won't be exactly who Roosevelt referred to when he said:
". . . it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable,/b> to the American public."
Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star", May 7, 1918
Until you are willing to respond substantively and stop the meaningless sloganeering, you ARE the most base, servile, unpatriotic and morally treasonable person on OS, bar none.
The fact that the Republicans were willing to use congressional procedures the way they did to thwart most action during Obama’s first two years, startled everyone, Obama included.
Obama did get the Healthcare bill through…something many other presidents have tried and failed to do. It was not perfect…but neither was Social Security when it first came into being. It is something upon which we can build.
But the fact that he could not get stuff done even with a majority does not mean that we can be satisfied with whatever happens next election…or that the Republicans with a majority and a supposed mandate would not be able to get their agenda closer to being passed than the Democrats were able. The Democrats are not going to put the country on the brink to get their way; the Republicans are more than willing to do that. The Democrats cannot “call the bluff” of the Republicans…because the Republicans are NOT bluffing. They are totally willing to bring the Republic to its knees in their “my way or the highway” frenzy.
BOTTOM LINE: Whether we like it or not…a minority CAN, if they are willing to be ruthless, nullify even landslide elections. They can bring chaos on an unimaginable scale…and seem perfectly willing to do so. It makes sense to have them work in that mode…rather than just throw in the towel and allow them to operate from a majority position. (I truly do not know what this Republic will look like if my prediction comes true and they get a significant majority in congress and the Oval Office.)
Do whatever you think it right. Vote for Obama if you think that is the thing to do—or vote for his opponent if you see that as the road to travel. In any case, I think Obama will lose big time…and I am beginning to think the conservatives will rack up large numbers in the congress.
We’ll soon see how that works out!
I fear it…but I understand that many here in OS do not.
We’ll see.
Chamberlain was totally foolish to believe Hitler could be believed to negotiate reasonably. Obama and the Republican monsters were no fools but put on a show they both had worked out to make putting Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block acceptable to the American public. Perhaps it worked, but it really doesn't matter who wins the next election as both the Republicans and the Democrats are totally bought and paid for by the corporate and financial masters of the political system.
Read:
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney08012011.html