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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@aol.com href="mailto:tanstl@aol.com">David Sladky</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=undisclosed-recipients:
href="mailto:undisclosed-recipients:">undisclosed-recipients:</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, August 04, 2010 1:30 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Flip-Flops and Failures - Obama's Political Nonsense
</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV style="CLEAR: both">
<DIV class=style23 align=right><FONT color=#990000 size=-1>August 4,
2010</FONT></DIV>
<H1 class=style37 align=left><FONT size=+1><A
href="http://counterpunch.com/giebel08042010.html">http://counterpunch.com/giebel08042010.html</A></FONT></H1>
<H1 class=style37 align=left><FONT size=+1>Obama's Political Nonsense
</FONT></H1>
<H1 class=style27><FONT color=#990000 size=+2>Flip-Flops and Failures
</FONT></H1>
<DIV class=style27><FONT size=+1>By DOUG GIEBEL </FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=style2><SPAN class=style34><FONT color=#990000
size=5>H</FONT></SPAN>ow long will apologists for President Barack Obama
continue to excuse his administration's flops and failings? </DIV>
<DIV class=style2>How long, too, must concerned Obama supporters ask, "Whatever
happened to the guy who campaigned as a fired-up crusader for truth, light and
justice?" For it is painfully obvious that Barack Obama abandoned his
campaign-winning persona once he prevailed in the election.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>A hand-wringing myth is that the Real Obama would stand up if
only he weren't advised by Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod, Arne Duncan; but the
dark princes behind his throne were there from the beginning and helped plot the
scenario their star performed in order to be elected. If one is known by
the company he keeps, then why would anyone believe that the Real Obama is
waiting in a dressing room offstage, when he chose those top-advisor buddies
because of the person Barack Obama really is?</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Some rationalize for the president, claiming it is still early
in his term, that experience at governing will bring back the stand-out
campaigner whose many promises have fallen short or seem to have been abandoned.
President Obama, David Axelrod and others point to the significant
accomplishments already on the record, such as health care and financial reform.
The accomplishments, though, are over-hyped and full of mendacious compromises
and loopholes aimed to curry favor with the powerful corporate interests whose
cash was in large measure responsible for Obams's victory in 2008.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>There's no doubt the current administration faces a Republican
opposition whose only goal seems to be a return to power a la the golden years
of Reagan and Bush. It doesn't help that some in Obama's own party are weighed
down by their alleged belief that to be right is better than to be left behind.
And yet --</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Barack Obama was elected by a majority of voters who believed
the man they saw out on the stump was the Man of the Hour. It is nonsense, then,
for Obama and his Chicago bulls to buy the sour lemonade that only by abandoning
a reformist script of "change" for one of cautious compromise can they
stay in power. And staying in power rather than "doing the right thing" to win
is evidently their game plan. It is hypocritical cynicism run amok in the
Beltway muck. It is, above all, disgraceful in its contempt for those who brung
'em to the ball.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Was it the Real Barack Obama who quickly and efficiently
cut his ties to longtime friends because they were "too controversial" and
might cost votes from those who probably wouldn't vote for him in the
first place? Was it the Real Barack Obama who couldn't go to bat for Van Jones,
Dawn Johnsen and others who were being smeared by anger mongers Beck, Limbaugh
and the rest of the right wing spin machine?</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Administration hypocrisy was blatantly brought home by the
malicious treatment of Shirley Sherrod, whose exemplary lifetime record stands
head and shoulders above those who put her and her family through the political
wringer. Consider only this: In apologizing for the mistreatment of Sherley
Sherrod, President Obama said it is necessary to make sure "that we're focusing
on doing the right thing instead of what looks to be politically necessary
at that very moment." Let us not, the president intoned, rush to judgment
because of expediency or prejudice.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>But what of Charlie Rangel? In preparing for his interview
with Harry Smith of CBS News, the president obviously expected a question on the
allegations of ethical misconduct against the long-time New York congressman. So
when the question was asked, Barack Obama did what he believed to be
"politically necessary" and not too indirectly urged Rangel to retire and (as
Obama did with the Bush administration) put the past behind him.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>As much as the other Beltway creatures we send into "pubic
service," Barack Obama is a political critter, one with that commonplace
inability to wrench himself by force from the <EM>status quo</EM> quicksand,
pulling the nation with him to safety.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Others have noted the administration's misguided fear that
having a black president associate with his less fortunate black brothers will
cost Obama and Democrats dearly at the polls. This absurdity belies the fact
that voters were and are proud to have elected Mr. Obama as the nations' first
black president. Since this president can't escape his genetic heritage, why
preempt critics by pretending not to care about the plight of black
Americans? Today politicians fervently proclaim their interest in "the middle
class" while excluding the "class" that lies buried beneath the middle to make
the "middle" possible.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Focus "on doing the right thing," he said. Then let us focus
on and remember those words when considering the victims of political necessity
who languish yet in Guantanamo or in other U.S. "detention centers" around the
world. Remember those words when recalling this president's willingness to
trample constitutional rights where the fear-mongering phantom of "terrorism" is
concerned. Remember those words when you remember how this president eagerly
sought the advice, counsel and acceptance of industry insiders while ignoring
experts from the reviled "left" as he jiggled together his vaunted health care
and other so-called "reform" packages. Remember those words when the nightmare
visions of so many innocent dead and maimed men, women and children haunt
whatever is left of an American national conscience, human beings killed or
damaged beyond "the right thing" by wars waged for whim rather than for
necessity. And remember that the president whose "let us not rush to judgment"
call is the same president who has authorized the assassination of alleged
enemies of the state, and whose interest in promoting kangaroo courts seems to
exceed his interest in abiding by the fundamental fairness that makes our
constitution the envy of other nations.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>However uncomfortable it may be, remember those words when
reminded of the many whose varied circumstances push them down and out of that
favored middle class.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Perhaps I am hoping for too much from President Obama,
convinced as he is of being reviled by the fire-breathing ranters for appearing
to favor "minorities," as if this president of all the people should govern only
for some of the people. Where privileged white boy Bobby Kennedy might
choose to visit impoverished black families, the black Barack Obama is
counselled to not be seen in the company of the most economically
deprived, of the homeless and the down-and-out.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>For all the praised President Obama has lavished on the
millions of "small" donors who helped finance his ultimate drive up Pennsylvania
Avenue, our president knows how all-important were those deep pocket donations
from the Big Boys. Odd how reality breeds hypocrisy.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>There is something strange, too, about President Obama's
official visits to the Gulf region as BP's oil spill wracked the watery shores.
Instead of making rousing speeches to lift the hopes and spirits of Drill Baby's
victims, our president made a few tepid remarks and chose to be photographed
gingerly inspecting a couple of oil blobs on a beach. The message sent from the
White House: We are doing all we can. Instead of fiery rhetoric, the world
received the pathetic message, "I can't go out there and plug the leak myself."
It was as if this president were borrowing a page from Tony Hayward's text, "I
want my life back."</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Well, go back. Go back and listen to, watch, that vigorous
Barack Obama on the campaign trail. Close your eyes and hear him speak in
cadence and tone that recalled the voices of Martin Luther King, F.D.R., J.F.K.
and Bobby Kennedy following the murder of Dr. King. Then compare those speeches
with the toned-down, muffled and "conservative" Obama who speaks to the world as
Nobel Prize Winning President of the United States.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Open your eyes and watch again that darkly brilliant night in
Chicago when the new First Family took the stage, having swept the nation in
that historic "nothing to lose" climb to victory. See once more the tears
streaming down the faces of men, women and children as they gloried in the
coming of a new age of honor, honesty and freedom.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>How juvenile, how foolish, how spectacularly ridiculous for
the Obama team to now believe it must abandon all the hope it once instilled in
the nonsensical conviction that political necessity must trump the "god within"
enthusiasm generated from coast to coast. The people when called upon, not only
elect the young man from Illinois because they believed (or fell for) his
promises of change, transparency, constitutional fairness. Had they come all the
way for this: an administration beholden to corrupt Beltway tradition and
consciously fearful of rocking the boat?</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>For all the times it came, that clarion call for "change," it
is now beyond doubt that Barack Obama has been unable to overcome his own demons
and challenge the "way things are" in Washington. "Change" is a word that's easy
to say, but it's much harder to accomplish. To cite John Donne, "no man is an
island," and Barack Obama seems to have forgotten how many true believers across
this country and across the globe were rooting for his success -- would stand
with him again, if he had the courage to call them into action. Or, would stand
with him again if they had not been burned once by a group whose ambition truly
seems to be "the last infirmity of noble minds."</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>It is not cynicism to wonder if Barack Obama ever really
believed his own most eloquent words. </DIV>
<DIV class=style2><STRONG>Doug Giebel</STRONG> welcomes comment at <A
href="mailto:dougcatz@itstriangle.com">dougcatz@itstriangle.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV class=style2> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV class=style2 align=center><A href="http://greentags.bigcartel.com/">WORDS
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