For the past year or so I've been reading increasingly negative and bitter diatribes against Obama. Like other informed observers I didn't bother voting for the bum and had no expectations of him. In fact I didn't bother voting at all since I don't want my participation to legitimise a farcical system that is corrupt to its core. As Emma Goldman said a century back, if voting could change anything, they'd have abolished the ballot box a long time ago.
In area after area -- military policy in Afghanistan, a bellicose stance towards Iran, the carte blanche afforded to the financial sector, the sluggish and ineffectual response to the environmental disaster in the Mexican Gulf -- commentators are recording their dismay and bitterness with the Obama administration. So just to clarify what this buffoon's job description really is:
1) Look sombre (GWB could never quite manage it, always threatening to break into a smirk).
2) Make grave speeches full of hot air.
3) Express righteous anger when required.
4) Dance to the tune of the financial overlords, who are the real permanent government of both the US and the Western world.
Next time you vote for a president, remember it's akin to betting on a fight where both boxers are owned by Don King.
With regard to point #3 (express righteous anger on demand), here's an article in the NYT:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/us/28obama.html?hp
QUOTE Saying that he is “angry and frustrated” over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama on Thursday ordered work to be suspended on exploratory drilling in the gulf and cancelled or deferred some future wells around the country, as the head of the agency regulating offshore drilling resigned under pressure. UNQUOTE
This buffoon is on the pockets of the country's plutocracy and in lieu of serious action he expresses "anger and frustration." No doubt he'll soon express anger and frustration at events in Iran and Afghanistan, at the lack of a climate change consensus, at the pathetic window dressing passing for financial reform. His righteous indignation can be turned on and off like a faucet. The act is wearing pretty thin, one must admit
Next time I commit some heinous crime, I'll express righteous anger at my moral turpitude.
ReplyDeleteLet's see now, if memory serves, Obummer was expressing righteous anger at the banks some weeks back. What's he really doing, though, is something different:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/28-3
QUOTE In several high profile speeches, Obama lashed out at Wall Street for its greed and mendacity, proposing financial reforms that appeared to be hard hitting if only because of the way the lobbyists for the financial services industry squealed about them.
But even as he was feinting left, he and his main economic operative, Tim Geithner, were moving right to kill off amendments that the bankers hated like Senator Bernie Sanders's proposal for a deep audit of the Federal Reserve Bank and the Brown-Kaufman Amendment that would have broken up the six biggest banks in America."
As John Heilman explained in New York Magazine, "Geithner's team spent much of its time during the debate over the Senate bill helping Senate Banking Committee chair Chris Dodd kill off or modify amendments being offered by more-progressive Democrats."
He used an old trick: embracing reform publicly while modifying its toughest provisions privately.
UNQUOTE