No - Obama can't control everything. But, I have MANY criticisms. Here's just one: can someone please explain Lawrence Summers to me?
He first came to my attention in '04(?) as the ignorant pig who, as the president of fucking Harvard, suggested that women were underrepresented at the elite levels of the sciences because their brains lack the aptitude. Then there was the racist shit.
But that was nothing compared to his much earlier key role in deregulating the financial markets (derivatives, whatevs) that was a primary cause, ultimately, of this ENTIRE financial mess. Under Clinton, right? Clinton, another 'democrat' who was personally amiable, but was basically a republican wet dream, supply sider, who gave away the farm to wall street.
So to Summers today: After being an architect of this current great-depression caliber mess, losing millions of dollars that he controlled on behalf of others in the process....
what does Obama do? He taps this corrupt, incompetent putz to lead on his economic policy??? !!!111!!!?? Argghh!! Ha ha! Um, WHAT?
And now where are we? Goldman, etc are back to rolling in dough, siphoning billions off the backs of people who, you know, actually work and produce something of value for a living. Except many of these working people can't, you know, work for a living because there are record levels of unemployment.
LOL - put me in the 'no' column. Wanna know what I think about the healthcare debacle? Ha ha.
i think that we now have the best health care bill we possibly could have gotten considering the blue dogs in congress, actually. we also have no issues with pre conditions, adults on their parents insurance til 26, etc. if you want to blame those votes, blame rahm emmanuel for running moderate dems in those districts.
health care bill is probably the biggest success of the administration. if you ever thought the public option was on the table w/ idiots like lieberman in congress u are fooling yourselves.
the real issues to be mad at obama about, imo, are things directly in his control that he hasnt actually been pushing for: investigations into torture/rendition, guantanamo, civil liberties issues, an ineffectual AG.
the legislative stuff here is nonsense though. the republicans were entirely willing to play chicken with the taxes, because they can afford to. If no compromise was struck, taxes go back up, and obama/dems take the electoral hits for raising taxes on the middle class in the middle of the recession for the forseeable future. the GOP wants nothing more than for taxes to go up this time -- because thats a sure electoral victory for them. that had a pretty strong hand here.
New face, same imperialism
Tariq Ali
October 6, 2010
After all the hope and hype, Obama's foreign policy mirrors the ugliness of the Bush years.
The election to the presidency of a mixed-race Democrat, vowing to heal America's wounds at home and restore its reputation abroad, was greeted with a wave of ideological euphoria not seen since the days of Kennedy. The shameful interlude of Republican swagger and criminality was over. George Bush and Dick Cheney had broken the continuity of a multilateral American leadership that had served the country well throughout the Cold War and after. Barack Obama would now restore it.
Rarely has self-interested mythology - or well-meaning gullibility - been more quickly exposed. There was no fundamental break in foreign policy between the Bush and Obama regimes. The strategic goals and imperatives of the US imperium remain the same, as do its principal theatres and means of operation.
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Obama's line towards Israel would be manifest even before he took office. On December 27, 2008, the Israeli Defence Forces launched an all-out air and ground assault on the population of Gaza. Bombing, burning, killing continued without interruption for 22 days, during which time the president-elect uttered not a syllable of reproof. By pre-arrangement, Tel Aviv called off its blitz a few hours before his inauguration on January 20, 2009, not to spoil the party.
Once installed, Obama called, like every US president, for peace between the two suffering peoples of the Holy Land, and again, like every predecessor, for Palestinians to recognise Israel and for Israel to stop its settlements in the territories it seized in 1967. Within a week of the President's speech in Cairo pledging opposition to further settlements, the governing Netanyahu coalition was extending Jewish properties in East Jerusalem with impunity.
However, war-zones further east have the first call on imperial attention. In 2002, on his way up the political ladder as a low-profile state senator in Illinois, Obama opposed the attack on Iraq; it was politically inexpensive to do so. By the time he was elected President, his first act was to maintain Bush's Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, long-time CIA functionary and veteran of the Iran-Contra affair, in the Pentagon. A cruder and more demonstrative signal of political continuity could hardly have been conceived.
Before his election, Obama promised a withdrawal of all US ''combat'' troops from Iraq within 16 months of his taking office, that is, by May 2010 - with a safety clause that the pledge could be ''refined'' in the light of events. It promptly was.
There persists the uneasy thought that the Iraqi resistance, capable of inflicting such damage on the US military machine only yesterday, might just be biding its time after its heavy losses and the defection of an important segment, and could still visit havoc on the collaborators tomorrow, should the US pull out altogether. To ensure against any such danger, Washington has put down markers in the modern equivalents - vastly larger and more hideous - of the Crusader fortresses of old.
As for Iran, schemes for a grand reconciliation between the two states had to be set aside. The calculation was upset by political polarisation in Iran itself. For Obama, the opportunity for ideological posturing was too great to resist. In a peerless display of sanctimony, he lamented with moist-eyed grief the death of a demonstrator killed in Tehran on the same day his drones wiped out 60 villagers, most of them women and children, in Pakistan.
The Democratic administration has now reverted to the line of its predecessor, attempting to corral Russia and China - European acquiescence can be taken for granted - into an economic blockade of Iran, in the hope of so strangling the country that the Supreme Leader will either be overthrown or obliged to come to terms.
From Palestine through Iraq to Iran, Obama has acted as just another steward of the US empire, pursuing the same aims as his predecessors, with the same means but with a more emollient rhetoric. In Afghanistan, he has gone further, widening the front of imperial aggression with a major escalation of violence, both technological and territorial.
When he took office, Afghanistan had already been occupied by US and satellite forces for more than seven years. During his election campaign, Obama - determined to outdo Bush in prosecuting a ''just war'' - pledged more troops and fire-power to crush the Afghan resistance, and more ground intrusions and drone attacks in Pakistan to burn out support for it across the border. This is one promise he has kept.
In what The New York Times delicately described as a ''statistic that the White House has not advertised'', it has informed its readers that ''since Mr Obama came to office, the Central Intelligence Agency has mounted more Predator drone strikes into Pakistan than during Mr Bush's eight years in office''.
Desperate to claim victory in a self-chosen ''just war'', Obama has dispatched a still larger expeditionary force, expanding the war to a neighbouring country where the enemy is suspected of finding succour. It was announced that Pakistan and Afghanistan would henceforward be treated as an integrated war-zone: ''Afpak''.
If a textbook illustration were needed of the continuity of American foreign policy across administrations, and the futility of so many softheaded attempts to treat the Bush-Cheney years as exceptional rather than essentially conventional, Obama's conduct has provided it. From one end of the Middle East to the other, the only significant material change he has brought is a further escalation of the War on Terror - or ''Evil'', as he prefers to call it - with Yemen now being seen as the next target.
Still, it would be a mistake to think that nothing has changed. No administration is exactly like any other, and each president leaves a stamp on his own. Substantively, vanishingly little of US imperial dominion has altered under Obama. But propagandistically, there has been a significant upgrade. In Cairo, at West Point, at Oslo, the world has been treated to one uplifting homily after another, to describe America's glowing mission in the world, and modest avowal of awe and sense of responsibility in carrying it forward.
Cant still goes a long way to satisfy those who yearn for it.
can someone please explain Lawrence Summers to me?
Summers was definitely a poor choice. But you know he's on his way out, right? Not sure when his last day is, but it was announced a couple of months ago that he's leaving the administration. It'll be interesting to see who his replacement is... and the choice will probably give some insight on where Obama's head is at right now.
billbradleyYou want BBQ sauce? Get the fuck out of my house. 2,889 Posts
The_Hook_Up said:
Jonny_Paycheck said:
that's the manical bird woman newt left his cancer-ridden wife for? Republicans are classy.
that's the manical bird woman newt left his cancer-ridden wife for? Republicans are classy.
Ha ha. No actually. I believe he left his first wife destitute and with cancer for his second wife. He and his second were married for like 20 years before he again cheated, and left #2 for the above third wife. Wife No. 2 had merely been diagnosed with MS.
This lovely lady (wife no. 3), though she looks like she was separated at birth from Cindy McCain, is actually many, many years younger than Newt. They started their affair when she was like 30.
Obama apologists are playing into the right's hands. The health care bill was a joke, financial reform was a joke, energy policy is a joke, Iraq withdrawl is a joke, Guantanamo is a joke. Obama took power with a super majority in congress and gave us some token shit. You can call his policies "liberal" only if you're far to the right, which is where issue debates are moving. He's a corporate stooge, just like Clinton was, and most of the party behind him.
Obama apologists are playing into the right's hands. The health care bill was a joke, financial reform was a joke, energy policy is a joke, Iraq withdrawl is a joke, Guantanamo is a joke. Obama took power with a super majority in congress and gave us some token shit. You can call his policies "liberal" only if you're far to the right, which is where issue debates are moving. He's a corporate stooge, just like Clinton was, and most of the party behind him.
^^^Yep. What he said.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
I'd vote for Michelle Obama in 2012, or any other time she might need me to back her.
Obama apologists are playing into the right's hands. The health care bill was a joke, financial reform was a joke, energy policy is a joke, Iraq withdrawl is a joke, Guantanamo is a joke. Obama took power with a super majority in congress and gave us some token shit. You can call his policies "liberal" only if you're far to the right, which is where issue debates are moving. He's a corporate stooge, just like Clinton was, and most of the party behind him.
The health care bill will give 30 million people coverage who don't have it now. 100,000 people die every year because they don't have insurance (a Harvard study). That is one piece of the health care bill. How is this a joke?
Financial reform saved jobs and saved us from a depression. This is what economists say, not my own personal opinion.
Most us troops will be out of Iraq by August; all us troops will be gone before 2012.
There are only 200 detainees left at guantanomo and Obama's original plan was to have them gone by 2013. That may not happen because of issues beyond his control, such as how we release prisoners to countries that won't take them and/or to countries that have no intention of rehabilitating or prosecuting suspected terrorists. Guantanomo is more of a symbolic issue than a practical one.
The health care bill will give 30 million people coverage who don't have it now. 100,000 people die every year because they don't have insurance (a Harvard study). That is one piece of the health care bill. How is this a joke?
Give? Don't you mean force them to buy?
keithvanhorn said:
Most us troops will be out of Iraq by August; all us troops will be gone before 2012.
You're dreaming. We'll have tens of thousand of troops there indefinitely, like we do in Korea, the Philippines and numerous other places we 'withdrew' from decades ago.
But to his base, this is just the latest and most outrageous betrayal in what it sees as a two-year cycle of caving to conservative pressure and Republican obstructionism. The litany from the left is now familiar: Mr. Obama was too modest in his stimulus package, too afraid to fight for a government-sponsored option in his health plan, too deferential to Wall Street in his financial reforms, too weak to stand up to the generals on Afghanistan.
???Obama may have just ensured that he???ll face a significant challenge to his renomination in 2012 from inside the Democratic Party,??? said Norman Solomon, a leader of Progressive Democrats of America. ???By giving away the store on such a momentous tax issue, he has now done huge damage to a large portion of the progressive base that helped to make him president.???
Mr. Solomon added, ???If he thinks that won???t have major effects on his re-election chances, he???s been swallowed up by a delusional bubble.???
The left isn't monolithic. There's no reason why we all have to agree on what Obama's priorities should be or how successful they've been.
Obama apologists are playing into the right's hands. The health care bill was a joke, financial reform was a joke, energy policy is a joke, Iraq withdrawl is a joke, Guantanamo is a joke. Obama took power with a super majority in congress and gave us some token shit. You can call his policies "liberal" only if you're far to the right, which is where issue debates are moving. He's a corporate stooge, just like Clinton was, and most of the party behind him.
The health care bill will give 30 million people coverage who don't have it now. 100,000 people die every year because they don't have insurance (a Harvard study). That is one piece of the health care bill. How is this a joke?
Financial reform saved jobs and saved us from a depression. This is what economists say, not my own personal opinion.
Most us troops will be out of Iraq by August; all us troops will be gone before 2012.
There are only 200 detainees left at guantanomo and Obama's original plan was to have them gone by 2013. That may not happen because of issues beyond his control, such as how we release prisoners to countries that won't take them and/or to countries that have no intention of rehabilitating or prosecuting suspected terrorists. Guantanomo is more of a symbolic issue than a practical one.
Health care bill isn't "giving" anyone anything, it is requiring people to get health insurance or face stiff penalties. With no public option, there is no real competition, so its basically a gift to the health insurance industry. You can state as many feel good stats from the Bill you want, but follow the money.
Financial bailout saved us from a large scale economic collapse. But, there has been no real reform, none of the big banks have been broken up, Glass-Steagall wasn't reisntated, banks are still dealing in derivatives, which are not traded on open exhanges, etc. And in 2011 you know the House GOP is going to go after the Consumer Protection Bureau, and the Volcker Rule. Its going to be 2007 again before you know it.
Iraq is a total fucking disaster. I'm not blaming Obama for it all, but that country is essentially fucked for the forseable future.
And don't get me started on yesterday's "compromise" on the Bush tax cuts.
But yeah, lets keep pretending Obama's "liberal" policies are doing some good, and bringing us "change."
[he health care bill will give 30 million people coverage who don't have it now. 100,000 people die every year because they don't have insurance (a Harvard study). That is one piece of the health care bill. How is this a joke?
Financial reform saved jobs and saved us from a depression. This is what economists say, not my own personal opinion.
Most us troops will be out of Iraq by August; all us troops will be gone before 2012.
There are only 200 detainees left at guantanomo and Obama's original plan was to have them gone by 2013. That may not happen because of issues beyond his control, such as how we release prisoners to countries that won't take them and/or to countries that have no intention of rehabilitating or prosecuting suspected terrorists. Guantanomo is more of a symbolic issue than a practical one.
You're off your fucking nut.
"Saved" jobs. What a joke. "Rehabilitate suspected terrorists". Even funnier.
[he health care bill will give 30 million people coverage who don't have it now. 100,000 people die every year because they don't have insurance (a Harvard study). That is one piece of the health care bill. How is this a joke?
Financial reform saved jobs and saved us from a depression. This is what economists say, not my own personal opinion.
Most us troops will be out of Iraq by August; all us troops will be gone before 2012.
There are only 200 detainees left at guantanomo and Obama's original plan was to have them gone by 2013. That may not happen because of issues beyond his control, such as how we release prisoners to countries that won't take them and/or to countries that have no intention of rehabilitating or prosecuting suspected terrorists. Guantanomo is more of a symbolic issue than a practical one.
You're off your fucking nut.
"Saved" jobs. What a joke. "Rehabilitate suspected terrorists". Even funnier.
Regardless, I insist you support our president, or I will have to question your patriotism and/or possible affiliation with terrorists who hate us for our freedom.
[he health care bill will give 30 million people coverage who don't have it now. 100,000 people die every year because they don't have insurance (a Harvard study). That is one piece of the health care bill. How is this a joke?
Financial reform saved jobs and saved us from a depression. This is what economists say, not my own personal opinion.
Most us troops will be out of Iraq by August; all us troops will be gone before 2012.
There are only 200 detainees left at guantanomo and Obama's original plan was to have them gone by 2013. That may not happen because of issues beyond his control, such as how we release prisoners to countries that won't take them and/or to countries that have no intention of rehabilitating or prosecuting suspected terrorists. Guantanomo is more of a symbolic issue than a practical one.
You're off your fucking nut.
"Saved" jobs. What a joke. "Rehabilitate suspected terrorists". Even funnier.
Regardless, I insist you support our president, or I will have to question your patriotism and/or possible affiliation with terrorists who hate us for our freedom.
[he health care bill will give 30 million people coverage who don't have it now. 100,000 people die every year because they don't have insurance (a Harvard study). That is one piece of the health care bill. How is this a joke?
Financial reform saved jobs and saved us from a depression. This is what economists say, not my own personal opinion.
Most us troops will be out of Iraq by August; all us troops will be gone before 2012.
There are only 200 detainees left at guantanomo and Obama's original plan was to have them gone by 2013. That may not happen because of issues beyond his control, such as how we release prisoners to countries that won't take them and/or to countries that have no intention of rehabilitating or prosecuting suspected terrorists. Guantanomo is more of a symbolic issue than a practical one.
You're off your fucking nut.
"Saved" jobs. What a joke. "Rehabilitate suspected terrorists". Even funnier.
Regardless, I insist you support our president, or I will have to question your patriotism and/or possible affiliation with terrorists who hate us for our freedom.
Yes - I currently have no health care. It's a pretty shitty situation.
I can hardly wait until I'm forced by law to pay the insurance industry for some sky-high deductible BS policy. So, in 2014 I can look forward to still, effectively having no health care, but I will be paying the highly profitable insurance industry for this pleasure!
Yes - I currently have no health care. It's a pretty shitty situation.
I can hardly wait until I'm forced by law to pay the insurance industry for some sky-high deductible BS policy. So, in 2014 I can look forward to still, effectively having no health care, but I will be paying the highly profitable insurance industry for this pleasure!
Healthcare reform FTW!
Maybe you should talk to some of the "smarter" people and figure out how to afford Health Care.
No - Obama can't control everything. But, I have MANY criticisms. Here's just one: can someone please explain Lawrence Summers to me?
He first came to my attention in '04(?) as the ignorant pig who, as the president of fucking Harvard, suggested that women were underrepresented at the elite levels of the sciences because their brains lack the aptitude. Then there was the racist shit.
But that was nothing compared to his much earlier key role in deregulating the financial markets (derivatives, whatevs) that was a primary cause, ultimately, of this ENTIRE financial mess. Under Clinton, right? Clinton, another 'democrat' who was personally amiable, but was basically a republican wet dream, supply sider, who gave away the farm to wall street.
So to Summers today: After being an architect of this current great-depression caliber mess, losing millions of dollars that he controlled on behalf of others in the process....
what does Obama do? He taps this corrupt, incompetent putz to lead on his economic policy??? !!!111!!!?? Argghh!! Ha ha! Um, WHAT?
And now where are we? Goldman, etc are back to rolling in dough, siphoning billions off the backs of people who, you know, actually work and produce something of value for a living. Except many of these working people can't, you know, work for a living because there are record levels of unemployment.
LOL - put me in the 'no' column. Wanna know what I think about the healthcare debacle? Ha ha.
I can not explain Larry Summers.
I was outraged when he made the announcement.
There are some good people on his economic team, but the strongest voices are Summers and other Wall Street oriented people.
I think I was the only person on soul strut who spoke out against the Wall Street bailout.
I was ridiculed for my stand.
I think I have been proven right, the bailout saved Wall Street and did nothing for people living beyond mid-town Manhattan or the Connecticut suburbs.
We will have troops in Iraq for years, decades*.
Any one who listened to what he was saying during the campaign would have known that was the most likely outcome.
The war will wind down in Afghanistan and expand in Pakistan and Yemen and other terrorist strong holds.
Any one who listened to what he was saying during the campaign would have known that was the most likely outcome.
Boo hoo, people are now "forced" to buy health care. More importantly, individuals and employers will be better able to afford health care and insurance companies can't discriminate against people with congenital diseases. I have never met a person who did not want health care.
Any one who listened to what he was saying during the campaign would have known that single payer was not on the table.
*2 more died this past week even though they are official no longer combat troops.
Laser - so you were/are in a favor of a global financial meltdown?
Saving wall street has done nothing to help small (and large) businesses get loans or operate on credit.
While AIG, Goldman Sachs and BofA were all saved, none of them are helping the economies of individuals and communities.
Meanwhile the small banks that actually invest in communities have been closed at a fast clip (no bail out for them) their assets given to Wall Street giants, taken out of the communities where the money came from.
Where I am sitting there has been a global financial meltdown.
The fact that wall street "investors" are riding high does not soften the blow for me.
Phongone- so were/are you in favor of repossessing peoples homes, throwing them out on the street, spitting on them, while Wall Street continues to think up new schemes for derivatives and other "investment" instruments?
I'd be perfectly happy to pay a decent amount of money for decent healthcare (and have done so). And I'd be especially happy if my money was going to actual healthcare - not record insurance industry profit.
But here in the US - relative to most other 1st world countries, we spend much more money for significantly less care.
At my last job I had 'decent' care through a work group policy. Coulda been worse I guess - but with high copays and not much money for prescriptions. And that policy cost probably about $8,000 to $10,000 a year just for me as an individual. Not sure the exact details - bc it was part of my salary package of course. But that's about what the HR lady said.
Most working class people can afford nothing like that. And I believe family coverage thru a typical job is about $14,000 per year and rising fast. But buying on the private market as an individual - you're going to get even worse terms. Way less.
So, no. I'll not be satisfied asking people to spend hundreds of dollars a month on a policy. And then paying in entirety for for any care on top of that because they have a $7,000 deductible or so to meet. But that's all they can afford.
We'll see. Won't we? I'm hoping for the best, but pretty darn skeptical.
I do know I've seen friends and close loved ones - who are part of the insurance system (not pre-existing conditioned out, or whatever), have their lives and their families' lives financially and emotionally devastated (by ruined credit, mountains of bills, denied mortgages, etc. in addition to suffering grave illness, and in one close family-member's instance - death). So, I'm not just whining, or whatever.
But I'm glad you all are happy to trust the insurance industry to handle this!
Comments
He first came to my attention in '04(?) as the ignorant pig who, as the president of fucking Harvard, suggested that women were underrepresented at the elite levels of the sciences because their brains lack the aptitude. Then there was the racist shit.
But that was nothing compared to his much earlier key role in deregulating the financial markets (derivatives, whatevs) that was a primary cause, ultimately, of this ENTIRE financial mess. Under Clinton, right? Clinton, another 'democrat' who was personally amiable, but was basically a republican wet dream, supply sider, who gave away the farm to wall street.
So to Summers today: After being an architect of this current great-depression caliber mess, losing millions of dollars that he controlled on behalf of others in the process....
what does Obama do? He taps this corrupt, incompetent putz to lead on his economic policy??? !!!111!!!?? Argghh!! Ha ha! Um, WHAT?
And now where are we? Goldman, etc are back to rolling in dough, siphoning billions off the backs of people who, you know, actually work and produce something of value for a living. Except many of these working people can't, you know, work for a living because there are record levels of unemployment.
LOL - put me in the 'no' column. Wanna know what I think about the healthcare debacle? Ha ha.
health care bill is probably the biggest success of the administration. if you ever thought the public option was on the table w/ idiots like lieberman in congress u are fooling yourselves.
the real issues to be mad at obama about, imo, are things directly in his control that he hasnt actually been pushing for: investigations into torture/rendition, guantanamo, civil liberties issues, an ineffectual AG.
the legislative stuff here is nonsense though. the republicans were entirely willing to play chicken with the taxes, because they can afford to. If no compromise was struck, taxes go back up, and obama/dems take the electoral hits for raising taxes on the middle class in the middle of the recession for the forseeable future. the GOP wants nothing more than for taxes to go up this time -- because thats a sure electoral victory for them. that had a pretty strong hand here.
again,
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/12/an_imperfect_but_not-that-bad.html
New face, same imperialism
Tariq Ali
October 6, 2010
After all the hope and hype, Obama's foreign policy mirrors the ugliness of the Bush years.
The election to the presidency of a mixed-race Democrat, vowing to heal America's wounds at home and restore its reputation abroad, was greeted with a wave of ideological euphoria not seen since the days of Kennedy. The shameful interlude of Republican swagger and criminality was over. George Bush and Dick Cheney had broken the continuity of a multilateral American leadership that had served the country well throughout the Cold War and after. Barack Obama would now restore it.
Rarely has self-interested mythology - or well-meaning gullibility - been more quickly exposed. There was no fundamental break in foreign policy between the Bush and Obama regimes. The strategic goals and imperatives of the US imperium remain the same, as do its principal theatres and means of operation.
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Obama's line towards Israel would be manifest even before he took office. On December 27, 2008, the Israeli Defence Forces launched an all-out air and ground assault on the population of Gaza. Bombing, burning, killing continued without interruption for 22 days, during which time the president-elect uttered not a syllable of reproof. By pre-arrangement, Tel Aviv called off its blitz a few hours before his inauguration on January 20, 2009, not to spoil the party.
Once installed, Obama called, like every US president, for peace between the two suffering peoples of the Holy Land, and again, like every predecessor, for Palestinians to recognise Israel and for Israel to stop its settlements in the territories it seized in 1967. Within a week of the President's speech in Cairo pledging opposition to further settlements, the governing Netanyahu coalition was extending Jewish properties in East Jerusalem with impunity.
However, war-zones further east have the first call on imperial attention. In 2002, on his way up the political ladder as a low-profile state senator in Illinois, Obama opposed the attack on Iraq; it was politically inexpensive to do so. By the time he was elected President, his first act was to maintain Bush's Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, long-time CIA functionary and veteran of the Iran-Contra affair, in the Pentagon. A cruder and more demonstrative signal of political continuity could hardly have been conceived.
Before his election, Obama promised a withdrawal of all US ''combat'' troops from Iraq within 16 months of his taking office, that is, by May 2010 - with a safety clause that the pledge could be ''refined'' in the light of events. It promptly was.
There persists the uneasy thought that the Iraqi resistance, capable of inflicting such damage on the US military machine only yesterday, might just be biding its time after its heavy losses and the defection of an important segment, and could still visit havoc on the collaborators tomorrow, should the US pull out altogether. To ensure against any such danger, Washington has put down markers in the modern equivalents - vastly larger and more hideous - of the Crusader fortresses of old.
As for Iran, schemes for a grand reconciliation between the two states had to be set aside. The calculation was upset by political polarisation in Iran itself. For Obama, the opportunity for ideological posturing was too great to resist. In a peerless display of sanctimony, he lamented with moist-eyed grief the death of a demonstrator killed in Tehran on the same day his drones wiped out 60 villagers, most of them women and children, in Pakistan.
The Democratic administration has now reverted to the line of its predecessor, attempting to corral Russia and China - European acquiescence can be taken for granted - into an economic blockade of Iran, in the hope of so strangling the country that the Supreme Leader will either be overthrown or obliged to come to terms.
From Palestine through Iraq to Iran, Obama has acted as just another steward of the US empire, pursuing the same aims as his predecessors, with the same means but with a more emollient rhetoric. In Afghanistan, he has gone further, widening the front of imperial aggression with a major escalation of violence, both technological and territorial.
When he took office, Afghanistan had already been occupied by US and satellite forces for more than seven years. During his election campaign, Obama - determined to outdo Bush in prosecuting a ''just war'' - pledged more troops and fire-power to crush the Afghan resistance, and more ground intrusions and drone attacks in Pakistan to burn out support for it across the border. This is one promise he has kept.
In what The New York Times delicately described as a ''statistic that the White House has not advertised'', it has informed its readers that ''since Mr Obama came to office, the Central Intelligence Agency has mounted more Predator drone strikes into Pakistan than during Mr Bush's eight years in office''.
Desperate to claim victory in a self-chosen ''just war'', Obama has dispatched a still larger expeditionary force, expanding the war to a neighbouring country where the enemy is suspected of finding succour. It was announced that Pakistan and Afghanistan would henceforward be treated as an integrated war-zone: ''Afpak''.
If a textbook illustration were needed of the continuity of American foreign policy across administrations, and the futility of so many softheaded attempts to treat the Bush-Cheney years as exceptional rather than essentially conventional, Obama's conduct has provided it. From one end of the Middle East to the other, the only significant material change he has brought is a further escalation of the War on Terror - or ''Evil'', as he prefers to call it - with Yemen now being seen as the next target.
Still, it would be a mistake to think that nothing has changed. No administration is exactly like any other, and each president leaves a stamp on his own. Substantively, vanishingly little of US imperial dominion has altered under Obama. But propagandistically, there has been a significant upgrade. In Cairo, at West Point, at Oslo, the world has been treated to one uplifting homily after another, to describe America's glowing mission in the world, and modest avowal of awe and sense of responsibility in carrying it forward.
Cant still goes a long way to satisfy those who yearn for it.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/new-face-same-imperialism-20101005-16612.html
http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/2010/12/be-citizen-not-subject.html
a friend linked to this recently, good post
that's the manical bird woman newt left his cancer-ridden wife for? Republicans are classy.
Summers was definitely a poor choice. But you know he's on his way out, right? Not sure when his last day is, but it was announced a couple of months ago that he's leaving the administration. It'll be interesting to see who his replacement is... and the choice will probably give some insight on where Obama's head is at right now.
This lovely lady (wife no. 3), though she looks like she was separated at birth from Cindy McCain, is actually many, many years younger than Newt. They started their affair when she was like 30.
At least you had the good sense to contain it to the last 30 years.
The health care bill will give 30 million people coverage who don't have it now. 100,000 people die every year because they don't have insurance (a Harvard study). That is one piece of the health care bill. How is this a joke?
Financial reform saved jobs and saved us from a depression. This is what economists say, not my own personal opinion.
Most us troops will be out of Iraq by August; all us troops will be gone before 2012.
There are only 200 detainees left at guantanomo and Obama's original plan was to have them gone by 2013. That may not happen because of issues beyond his control, such as how we release prisoners to countries that won't take them and/or to countries that have no intention of rehabilitating or prosecuting suspected terrorists. Guantanomo is more of a symbolic issue than a practical one.
Give? Don't you mean force them to buy?
You're dreaming. We'll have tens of thousand of troops there indefinitely, like we do in Korea, the Philippines and numerous other places we 'withdrew' from decades ago.
The left isn't monolithic. There's no reason why we all have to agree on what Obama's priorities should be or how successful they've been.
Health care bill isn't "giving" anyone anything, it is requiring people to get health insurance or face stiff penalties. With no public option, there is no real competition, so its basically a gift to the health insurance industry. You can state as many feel good stats from the Bill you want, but follow the money.
Financial bailout saved us from a large scale economic collapse. But, there has been no real reform, none of the big banks have been broken up, Glass-Steagall wasn't reisntated, banks are still dealing in derivatives, which are not traded on open exhanges, etc. And in 2011 you know the House GOP is going to go after the Consumer Protection Bureau, and the Volcker Rule. Its going to be 2007 again before you know it.
Iraq is a total fucking disaster. I'm not blaming Obama for it all, but that country is essentially fucked for the forseable future.
And don't get me started on yesterday's "compromise" on the Bush tax cuts.
But yeah, lets keep pretending Obama's "liberal" policies are doing some good, and bringing us "change."
You're off your fucking nut.
"Saved" jobs. What a joke. "Rehabilitate suspected terrorists". Even funnier.
Regardless, I insist you support our president, or I will have to question your patriotism and/or possible affiliation with terrorists who hate us for our freedom.
dissention is the highest form of patriotism.
(I supported until FISA)
You're either with us or against us.
I can hardly wait until I'm forced by law to pay the insurance industry for some sky-high deductible BS policy. So, in 2014 I can look forward to still, effectively having no health care, but I will be paying the highly profitable insurance industry for this pleasure!
Healthcare reform FTW!
Maybe you should talk to some of the "smarter" people and figure out how to afford Health Care.
I can not explain Larry Summers.
I was outraged when he made the announcement.
There are some good people on his economic team, but the strongest voices are Summers and other Wall Street oriented people.
I think I was the only person on soul strut who spoke out against the Wall Street bailout.
I was ridiculed for my stand.
I think I have been proven right, the bailout saved Wall Street and did nothing for people living beyond mid-town Manhattan or the Connecticut suburbs.
We will have troops in Iraq for years, decades*.
Any one who listened to what he was saying during the campaign would have known that was the most likely outcome.
The war will wind down in Afghanistan and expand in Pakistan and Yemen and other terrorist strong holds.
Any one who listened to what he was saying during the campaign would have known that was the most likely outcome.
Boo hoo, people are now "forced" to buy health care. More importantly, individuals and employers will be better able to afford health care and insurance companies can't discriminate against people with congenital diseases. I have never met a person who did not want health care.
Any one who listened to what he was saying during the campaign would have known that single payer was not on the table.
*2 more died this past week even though they are official no longer combat troops.
Saving wall street has done nothing to help small (and large) businesses get loans or operate on credit.
While AIG, Goldman Sachs and BofA were all saved, none of them are helping the economies of individuals and communities.
Meanwhile the small banks that actually invest in communities have been closed at a fast clip (no bail out for them) their assets given to Wall Street giants, taken out of the communities where the money came from.
Where I am sitting there has been a global financial meltdown.
The fact that wall street "investors" are riding high does not soften the blow for me.
Phongone- so were/are you in favor of repossessing peoples homes, throwing them out on the street, spitting on them, while Wall Street continues to think up new schemes for derivatives and other "investment" instruments?
But here in the US - relative to most other 1st world countries, we spend much more money for significantly less care.
At my last job I had 'decent' care through a work group policy. Coulda been worse I guess - but with high copays and not much money for prescriptions. And that policy cost probably about $8,000 to $10,000 a year just for me as an individual. Not sure the exact details - bc it was part of my salary package of course. But that's about what the HR lady said.
Most working class people can afford nothing like that. And I believe family coverage thru a typical job is about $14,000 per year and rising fast. But buying on the private market as an individual - you're going to get even worse terms. Way less.
So, no. I'll not be satisfied asking people to spend hundreds of dollars a month on a policy. And then paying in entirety for for any care on top of that because they have a $7,000 deductible or so to meet. But that's all they can afford.
We'll see. Won't we? I'm hoping for the best, but pretty darn skeptical.
I do know I've seen friends and close loved ones - who are part of the insurance system (not pre-existing conditioned out, or whatever), have their lives and their families' lives financially and emotionally devastated (by ruined credit, mountains of bills, denied mortgages, etc. in addition to suffering grave illness, and in one close family-member's instance - death). So, I'm not just whining, or whatever.
But I'm glad you all are happy to trust the insurance industry to handle this!