Obama

Krugman

President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein ...

Cornel West's note to Obama, BBC News, January 20, 2010.

The Destabilization of Haiti

"Washington seeks to reinstate Haiti as a full-fledged US colony, with all the appearances of a functioning democracy. The objective is to impose a puppet regime in Port-au-Prince and establish a permanent US military presence in Haiti. 

This view from outside Obamaworld is that Obama is a corrupt community organizer. That is, a corrupt organizer of a corrupt and profoundly wounded national community. The lack of protection by and sense of responsibility, an "ability to respond", of an amoral "legacy" leadership is dooming what is left of our democracy and our collective and individual security.

The progressive messengers of this serious plight are clamoring for their leaders and fellow citizens to fight the seduction of corruption, denial, minimization and cronyism. These messengers are pursuing with their truth to power an intelligent, personable and eloquent president who seems to have no conscience over breaking passionate, large-scale promises for the common good that won him the election. They also are pushing against a collection of Congress people so deeply enmeshed in bribe-taking they seem to have ears only for their often out of state corporate donor "constituency" at the critical expense of their oath-taken geographical one, as well as a sustained fear of a corporate-owned, reckless and shallow media always willing to negatively spin all that is anti-corporate.

Reply to FDL Statement on Health Care Reform from MA voter

As a Massachusetts voter, I can say that my lack of enthusiasm for yesterday’s election was certainly due to the behind the scenes corporate deal making and bailouts for the banking and insurance industries as well as big pharma and others at the expense of real reform for ordinary Americans.

The Obama administration, with help from Congress, has made the biggest transfer of wealth up from ordinary people to the wealthy and powerful in the history of the planet. This is not the change we hoped for.

What happened to the fierce urgency of now? Or is that only for banksters and insurance executives?

What the country needs now are real solutions to our very real problems. It is beyond frustrating that there are obvious solutions to benefit the vast majority of Americans and my own party refuses to even consider them — apparently because they might anger some corporate donors.

Healthcare reform is a perfect example of this.

There were a lot of warnings that were overlooked and a lot of strange things had to line up in order for the attempted bombing to take place and left a lot of questions begging to be answered ... for instance these ten. Then there was the unrelated (?) strange story that Police ‘forgot’ to take explosives off a flight to Dublin

More to come ...

The Yemen Hidden Agenda: Behind the Al-Qaeda Scenarios, A Strategic Oil Transit Chokepoint

On December 25 US authorities arrested a Nigerian named Abdulmutallab aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on charges of having tried to blow up the plane with smuggled explosives. Since then reports have been broadcast from CNN, the New York Times and other sources that he was “suspected” of having been trained in Yemen for his terror mission. What the world has been subjected to since is the emergence of a new target for the US ‘War on Terror,’ namely a desolate state on the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen. A closer look at the background suggests the Pentagon and US intelligence have a hidden agenda in Yemen.

Posted by Stranahan on youtube:

I'm a former Obama supporter. I'm just totally fed up with reversal after reversal and lie after lie from President Obama on health care.
 

This is from August, but it's a spot on prediction of what was going to happen. Click the header for the original article with the links

Obama On Health Care: A Comprehensive Betrayal – Where Do We Go From Here?

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Posted Wed, 08/12/2009

At some point in last year's presidential election campaign, Barack Obama went on Bill O'Reilly's show to concede that maybe the war in Iraq, and Bush's murderous escalation of that war, the so-called surge, were not such bad ideas after all. Obama met with the admirals and generals and came away declaring that withdrawal from Iraq really meant withdrawal to secure bases inside Iraq. A US troop pullout would not happen until well into his second term, if then, with the accent on the “if.”

Casting the wishes of most Americans and the overwhelming majority of his own party under the bus, Democratic leaders and the corporate media told us all, was the wise, the realistic, the pragmatic thing to do. The election, they said, would be waged on domestic policy, on health care. Barack Obama has again and again doubled down on that set of promises, declaring that his first term should be judged on whether he manages to deliver comprehensive, affordable health care to everybody, including the nation's fifty million uninsured.

Feingold expresses frustration over Senate version

Richard Moore
Investigative Reporter

With key sections of the U.S. Patriot Act set to expire Dec. 31, the Obama administration - essentially tiptoeing through the corridors of Congress and using the raucous health care debate as cover - has quietly maneuvered for renewal of the controversial provisions, which he opposed as a senator.

Perhaps the most contentious measure is the business records provision, also known as the library provision, which allows the government to seek a court order forcing private entities such as banks, hospitals, and libraries to hand over "any tangible thing" - from library circulation records to medical records - officials think is relevant in a terrorist investigation.

ACLU: What you should know

On December 31, 2009, three provisions of the Patriot Act will sunset. This is the perfect opportunity for Congress to examine all of our surveillance laws and amend those that have been found unconstitutional or have been abused to collect information on innocent people, including last year's changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Attorney General Guidelines (AGGs).

Click the 1st pic for a slideshow and the second for an interactive map
.

Peter Morici via Ian Welsh

You got to admit President Obama obfuscates embarrassing facts and pays off his supporters as well as any politician since Huey Long.

He slams health insurance companies, while endorsing heath care reforms that would compel thirty more million Americans to buy their policies or face a poll tax.

Now he slams the bankers for paying themselves $140 billion in bonuses.

Those bonuses were "earned" trading derivatives and other engineered products [watch these two videos] with the more than $2 trillion in cheap credit provided by the Federal Reserve, TARP and other Washington largess. Meanwhile, bankers denied worthy homeowners opportunities to refinance mortgages and solid small businesses credit.

How much is $140 billion?

This is such a good blog, I posted the entire thing. But please click on the header to read the original. What we are being sold about Afghanistan is a reprise of The Simla Manifesto

Remnants of an Army by Elizabeth Butler depicting William Brydon who was the sole British survivor after Britain's catastrophic retreat from Kabul.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

What Empires Have Said Throughout History: "One More Surge"

A leading advisor to the U.S. military, the Rand Corporation, released a study in 2008 called "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida". The report confirms what experts have been saying for years: the war on terror is actually weakening national security.

As a press release about the study states:

"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."

What happens when a Democrat runs on Change You Can Believe In with the implied message that he will reverse the policies of the previous scandal-ridden incumbent only to continue many of the same policies.

Such as:

• Not reform, or rein in the excesses of the Wall Street neo-robber-barons in any way whatsoever.
• Continue the war in Iraq and escalate the war in Afghanistan even after you made a pledge to bring the troops home
• Break your promise to support a single-payer health care system

Those are just a few of the issues, by turning your back on the people who volunteered and gave their time and money, you turn off your own base in order to try to please that elusive, and/or even better, the illusive, "centrist" voter; by doing so, the base reacts, like ...

Poll: 40% of Dems 'Not Likely' Or 'Will Not Vote' Next Year