Sunday, May 02, 2010

Does Obama Know the War He's In?

By Robert Parry
May 2, 2010

In addressing the University of Michigan graduating class, President Barack Obama pleaded for increased “civility” in American politics and in the media, faulting extremes of the Left and the Right for the ugly acrimony that is sapping the nation’s ability to address serious problems.

Read on.
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5 comments:

Dean Taylor said...

Yes, of course, but what is occurring here is not a recent phenomenon--i.e., it's been a long time coming. Well before 9/11, we had been going down hill as a nation: morally, economically, ethically, etc. Like, for example, the hubris it took for us to take over after Dien Bien Phu. We lost our moral compass completely after that...

Forwardlooking is still treating the American public as the naive collective they have always demonstrated themselves to be. He really does not care--he's just another goofball DC careerist going through the motions. Robert: Forwardlooking doesn't even have a clue. Does he actually strike you as someone capable of vision, imagination, ideas? He announced to his party that he was more than willing to prostitute himself, they took him up on the offer. He's there. All he can come up with at this point is, "now, I want everybody to talk nice!"

As for the other issue, Scott Horton covered this in a recent interview: except for the military apparatus, the GOP detests the State--they have declared their views of the State over and over again. They care about Wall Street and the corporate sector--c'est tout. Horton went on: they don't even care if they're not re-elected: if they can get in for four years, cause malicious damage--e.g., plunder Social Security--rape the Treasury, and then depart, they're content. They're into that John Galt/individualist claptrap promulgated by a narcissist yenta by the name of Rand.

And the hick, racist Teabaggers are going along for the ride. To a man, Teabaggers have the IQ of celery. It has to be something really obvious that they can point to and blame for them to collectivize. For example, right now, all they know is that there's a black guy in the Whitehouse. Not, is there a competent or incompetent figure leading America--that would be too complex an issue to contemplate. Better to stay with simple "truths," get home, watch Hee Haw reruns.

Politicians do not care about America. They care about their careers, their stock portfolios, their real estate. Plato called for a philosopher/Statesman to lead. These people are lawyers. They went in for career training, not an education in the sense of an immersion in the Humanities. If Forwardlooking did any pro bono work in Chicago is was in order to pad his C.V. He probably still had sand in his bathing suit when he left Waikiki and went to Harvard. Come 2012, he'll be voted out, the Moosehunter will "have a try." That is, the candidate with melanin didn't seem to do the trick--let's try two X chromosomes. That should do it. "change you really can believe in!"

America: Ringling Bros., and Barnum and Bailey


http://antiwar.com/radio/2010/04/29/mark-ames-5/

Mon May 03, 04:00:00 AM 2010
Dean said...

II.

Here are the Wiki-listed predictions for the House in November:

Overall

Most non-partisan pundits predict that the Republicans will gain seats in the 2010 elections, and it is possible that the Republicans could retake control of the House in 2010.

Rothenberg Political Report.
In April 2010, Stuart Rothenberg wrote on his blog that "... the atmospherics remain strongly behind the GOP, and major Republican House gains are extremely likely" and that "it's clear that the battleground is almost entirely on Democratic soil. Obviously, control of the House is at risk."

Crystal Ball
In a May 2009 column for his newsletter, Larry Sabato wrote "History instead suggests that the overall odds favor Republican gains in the House in 2010, but relatively modest gains. After all, Democrats now hold 257 House seats, 39 seats more than the minimum needed to control the House. Only Truman in 1946 and Clinton in 1994 yielded more than 39 seats to the opposition party in their first midterm election."

Charlie Cook
In a February 2010 interview with National Journal, he said that "it's very hard to come up with a scenario where Democrats don't lose the House. It's very hard."

Nate Silver
In an August 2009 prediction, he wrote that the Democrats would suffer a loss of between 20 to 50 seats in the 2010 House elections. In another August prediction, Silver wrote "While the Democrats are not extraordinary likely to lose the House, such an outcome is certainly well within the realm of possibility (I'd put the chance at somewhere between 1-in-4 and 1-in-3)." In September 2009, an article titled "Generic House Polling Suggests the Republicans Could Regain the House in 2010" was published on Silver's blog, FiveThirtyEight.com. By April 2010, Silver had wrote that "If Democrats were to lose 50, 60, 70 or even more House seats, it would not totally shock me" in an article on the blog titled, "Generic Ballot Points Toward Possible 50+ Seat Loss for Democrats".


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2010#Predictions

Mon May 03, 04:00:00 AM 2010
Dean Taylor said...

III.

And, speaking of the apparent familial likeness between Forwardlooking and Moosehunter, Alan Farago (CounterPunch, 3 May 2010) writes of the current Gulf oil spill "bi-partisan-friendly"enabling:


Did we have to kill the Gulf of Mexico to stop, "Drill, baby, drill"? Before the spill from Deepwater Horizon is contained, Florida will see exactly the environmental catastrophe that kept offshore oil away from Florida's coasts until the November 2008 elections. "Drill, baby, drill!". The question arises: why must the American public "see" an environmental disaster before believing it represented an unacceptable risk all along?

A government official sought to describe the difficulty of containing the spill on account of "the tyranny of distance and the tyranny of depth." There is no tyranny here except the tyranny of idiots. Sarah Palin, in an Iowa campaign stop a week before the November 2008 presidential election, articulated that so-called logic. Her speech started with the recognition that we need to apply new technology to the business of a clean energy future. Jobs, etc. But that wasn't what the crowd was waiting for. "Now is the time for 'drill, baby, drill'", she read from the script-- like a really bad actor telegraphing the punch line. (It is worth noting that President Obama is following the same script of "all of the above" on energy investments, absent the fear mongering.)

http://www.counterpunch.org/farago05032010.html



Apart from the juvenile, suggestive pandering inherent in her "now is the time for 'drill, baby, drill!'" comment--she seems more than willing to cultivate and trade on the photogenic/sexual persona "resource" as there is not likely to be anything approaching an intellect to offer the electorate--both Moose and Forward proffer a cosmetic, surface icon fully in keeping with the legerdemain of the neo-liberal market.

Political candidate as credit default swap.

Even Orwell could not have imagined what was coming...

Mon May 03, 04:54:00 PM 2010
Inquisitor said...

Is there a way to mobilize the Democratic caucus and the Whitehouse to stand behind such simple requirements as defending the electric program at Chysler - when tax money has such a high equity in the company? Why is the current administration allowing itself to be so willing to be a punching bag - instead of showing the kind of courage that people associated with the Roosevelts?

For anyone who has been wondering - Chrysler's electric program was quietly disbanded, and a microscopic electric Fiat is supposed to be on the market instead of the two fabulous electrics that Chrysler was to have on the market by the end of this year. Clearly this administration is choosing to blow its credibility.

Mon May 03, 09:57:00 PM 2010
Jerry Paul said...

Probably he is not aware.

Qatar Benefitting From Dubai Debt Woes -Top Exec

Mon May 10, 04:59:00 AM 2010

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