Has Obama jumped the shark?

Last night, Keith Olbermann's Countdown on MSNBC had a special comment regarding the great tax "compromise" engineered by Obama and the Republicans. It was great. I really liked what he had to say near the beginning of the comment:

In exchange for selling out a principle campaign pledge, and the people to whom and for whom it was made, in exchange for betraying the truth that the idle and corporate rich of this country have gotten unprecedented and wholly indefensible tax cuts for a decade, in exchange for giving the idle and corporate rich of this country two more years to accumulate still more and more vast piles of personal wealth with which they can buy and sell everybody else—

In exchange for extending what he spent the weeks before the midterms calling tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires to people who have proven, without a scintilla of doubt, without even a fig leaf of phony effort to make it look like they would do otherwise, that they will keep the money for themselves—

In exchange for injecting new vigor into the infantile, moronic, disproved-for-a-decade three-card Monte game of an economic theory purveyed by these treacherous and ultimately traitorous Republicans, that tax cuts for the rich will somehow lead to job creation, even though if that had ever been true in the slightest, the economy would not be where it is today.

In exchange for giving tax cuts for the rich which the nation cannot afford, and extending their vintage through the next election and thus promising, at best, a reenactment of this whole sorry, amoral, degrading spectacle during the 2012 presidential campaign, when the sides will be climbing over each other to again extend these cuts—

In exchange for this searing and transcendent capitulation, the President got just thirteen months of extended benefits for those unemployed less than 100 weeks. And he got nothing, absolutely nothing for those unemployed for longer, the 99ers.

Very well said.

Rachel Maddow, at the end of her show right after Countdown, pulled out a favorite quote of hers supposedly from Gandhi,

“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”

Sadly, she then proceeded to illustrate how the Obama administration has it backwards,

So, first he won. Then they fought him. He got a lot of legislation passed in his first two years as president. But by fighting him in this way, the Republicans destroyed him in the midterms.

And in the first big test of whether those midterm losses had seriously wounded the president, or whether he was going to come back stronger after that defeat, the president face-planted, calling a hastily-arranged press conference to try to defend an inexplicable capitulation, even before his opponents have taken power, even with public opinion on his side.

So first he won. Then they fought him. And now, with the way he lost this fight, we have arrived at the part you would hope would be the worst of this process, but it isn‘t.

What is happening now is that this presidency is at risk of becoming a punch line. It‘s not that he has lost a fight or two or three or four. It‘s that the very idea that he knows how to win or even wants to win has become a joke.

In my opinion, this administration is over. Time to move on. Of course, with the two-party system, whoever grabs the torch will perpetuate this travesty against the people of the United States...except for the politically elite and the rich and powerful.

The great tax "compromise" blowback begins

I've run across a couple of posts re the tax cut "compromise" that I think are spot on. The first is Dave Sirota's writing that we in the United States (or at least those who govern it) have gone "batshit crazy." His first of four reasons is very telling:

We just had an election that focused intently on the problems that come with a growing national deficit and debt. Correspondingly, almost every major poll after the election shows the majority of the country therefore doesn't want to extend Bush tax cuts on income above $250,000 a year. Nonetheless, a Democratic president who won the biggest electoral landslide in contemporary history on a promise to rescind those tax cuts -- that same president is now pushing to extend those very tax cuts, thus seriously increasing the national deficit/debt.

I recommend your reading the entire article.

It's also great that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) is incensed about this horrible deal. He's is totally on point when he says,

"I can tell you with absolute certainty that a couple of months from now our Republican friends will have driven up the national debt by giving tax breaks to the very rich, and then they're going to come back and say, 'Oh my word! We have a growing national debt and a big deficit! We're going to have to cut back on Pell Grants, on education, on health care, on environmental protection -- all of which will impact the middle class!'" said Sanders.

I sincerely hope that when the Republicans do start falling back on the debt/deficit excuse that people such as Mr. Sanders will look them right in the face and say, "Well, you extended the tax cuts for the rich putting us further in debt, so let's not hear any whining while we help the middle class get back on their feet."

The great tax "compromise" debacle is imminent...

I am really going to be steamed if the democrats (read: Obama) cave and give the upper income a continuing tax break. You just KNOW that they will be saying, "It's going to be 'only' for two years" or some such idiocy.

There should be NOTHING for those earning above $250,000. We don't need to add to the deficit by giving the "haves" more money. And the weenie response of, "We got so much in return for it!" is unacceptable! Any bets, "Some will be disappointed" will be spoken by our fearless leader as an attempt to mollify his base?

As usual, the "We will never compromise!" Republicans win again. Obama's duplicity is appalling. He had a chance to be a great President, but he acceded to money before the people.

A pox on the democrats! I've always said that the two parties are made of the same cloth. One more piece of evidence.

Update (one hour later)

The Huffington Post says a deal has been struck. To wit (emphasis mine):

...the contours of a final package emerged with more detail than ever before. While it's clear that the White House gave in on its main front -- the desire to let the tax levels for the upper-income levels revert to pre-Bush rates -- administration officials claimed that they were able to secure major victories in return....to continue for two years...

In reference to my comment about the Dems and Reps being the same, Jeremy Tri comments in the article,

Sure would of been nice to have elected a democrat to be president in 2008!

Boy, howdy, amen.

Noam Chomsky on the Wikileaks dump

Noam Chomsky was on Democracy Now! this morning (It's about the only place on American TV that he can be seen). He discusses the ramifications of the latest Wikileaks dump. Very interesting stuff. Here he states something that the U.S. pointedly ignores:

"Latest polls show Arab opinion holds that the major threat in the region is Israel, that’s 80 percent; the second threat is the United States, that’s 77 percent. Iran is listed as a threat by 10 percent," Chomsky says. "This may not be reported in the newspapers, but it’s certainly familiar to the Israeli and U.S. governments and the ambassadors. What this reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership."

He mentions the democratic election of the Hamas in 2006 and the American/Israeli response as an example.

He also says that when American diplomats/administrators use the word "Arabs" they are referring to dictators (e.g., "Arabs believe that Iran is a major threat to the Middle East"), not the Arab public at large.

You can see a streaming of the interview here.

The point of all this is when the U.S. goes into a country in the name of "Democracy" (read: "invades") they are actually trying to prop up dictators (in order to exploit the country's resources) so that the U.S. does not have to rely on the whim of the people ("democracy") possibly kicking them out.

Bush's third term rolls along

The cover-up and "Let's look forward...not backward" meme goes on.

Let's face it, "folks," (One of Obama's favorite words) the third Bush term is alive and well, thriving in the Palace of Versailles...now called Washington, D.C.

Obama will never get it

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Last week):

The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (Last week):

This is not a time for compromise, and I can tell you that we will not compromise on our principles…We're going to do everything -- and I mean everything we can do -- to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.

Michael Moore (Election night):

In the morning, President Obama is going to hold a press conference, and he’s going to take the wrong path. He’s going to say what we really need now is more bipartisanship and more kumbaya. And the other side wants none of that. And I don’t know—I don’t know how much you have to be battered and bruised to understand when the abuser is not going to stop abusing.

President Barack Obama (Day after election):

We must find common ground in order to make progress on some uncommonly difficult challenges...I do believe there is hope for civility. I do believe there is hope for progress and that's because I believe in the resiliency of a nation that has bounced back from much worse than what it is going through right now.

Obama had his chance when he had both houses in his pocket and he chose not to take advantage. Notice how he still doesn’t get it. He keeps believing in “hope” and “civility” when the Republicans are hell-bent on taking him down. Michael Moore is right on point. Pathetic.

The Ultimate Sin

The opening paragraph in Glenn Greenwald's post two days ago is exactly what I've been asking myself about this and many other issues for years (the US torturing of individuals, detaining without any due process whatsoever, US-sanctioned assassination, not-at-Ground-Zero mosque, etc.). I am amazed to this day how this whole debacle has been framed into "issues." We shouldn't even be having discussions about these. These concepts are so egregious as to not warrant a pro-con conversation:

During the Bush-era torture debates, I was never able to get past my initial incredulity that we were even having a "debate" over whether the President has the authority to torture people. Andrew Sullivan has responded to some of the questions I posed about his defense of Obama's assassination program, and I realize now that throughout this whole assassination debate, specific legal and factual issues aside, my overarching reaction is quite similar: I actually can't believe that there is even a "debate" over whether an American President -- without a shred of due process or oversight -- has the power to compile hit lists of American citizens whom he orders the CIA to kill far away from any battlefield. The notion that the President has such an unconstrained, unchecked power is such a blatant distortion of everything our political system is supposed to be -- such a pure embodiment of the very definition of tyrannical power -- that, no matter how many times I see it, it's still hard for me to believe there are people willing to expressly defend it.

This is the deal breaker for me regarding President Obama. I will never support an individual who has no problem in authorizing the killing of another human being without any kind of due process, no matter what else he might accomplish. That is so against the grain of what I believe our country should represent. A living, breathing, totally unique human being possibly being snuffed out forever on one person's say-so. That is the ultimate sin.

As Mr. Greenwald says, "The notion that the President has such an unconstrained, unchecked power is such a blatant distortion of everything our political system is supposed to be..."

We're now on the slippery slope. Where will we go from here?