Fuck Obama

[Bruce Dazzling]

Judging by the gushing responses of my friends on Facebook, I'd say that America's collective battered woman syndrome is in full force.

Last night was nothing more than an hour long version of "Please baby, I' ain't nothin' without you! I'll never do it again, I swear! Give me another chance and things will be different this time, you'll see!"

And man-oh-man, did we fucking fall for it.

Again.

[crikkett]

I didn't. And I saw him re-live the version of the Bin Laden assassination that he wanted us all to remember.

And then I saw him wish that we were more like his troops.

I didn't fall for it, for a minute.

[ninakat]

Judging by the gushing responses of my friends on Facebook, I'd say that America's collective battered woman syndrome is in full force.

Last night was nothing more than an hour long version of "Please baby, I' ain't nothin' without you! I'll never do it again, I swear! Give me another chance and things will be different this time, you'll see!"

And man-oh-man, did we fucking fall for it.

Again.

Great analogy! And this is really good -- Nader's on fire:

[ninakat]

nutshell: Patrick Cockburn is an Obamapologist who thinks The Great O is stupid and has been tricked into obedience by the Israelis.

See No Evil: A Strange Absolution of Obama’s Warmongering
Chris Floyd, Feb. 3, 2012

It's hard to say which is more disturbing in Patrick Cockburn's recent analysis of America’s warmongering toward Iran: his portrait of wily Jews manipulating and "bamboozling" the American power elite into acting against their own interests and good intentions; or the 'Amos and Andy' echoes in the image of a Negro President too dumb to know he's being played by wicked Hebrews. In any case, it is an astounding -- and dismaying -- performance from a writer who has long been one of the very best in delineating the operations of empire in the Middle East.

. . .

Unlike Cockburn -- and the innumerable progressive apologists for Obama -- I have the fullest respect for the president's intellect and his powers of perception. I think it is deeply insulting to him to say that he is not aware of the true impact of his policies, both in foreign and domestic affairs. As Cockburn himself states, Obama is pursuing "a set of policies that make sense only if the aim is overthrow of the regime in Tehran." Yes. That is indeed the case. The glaringly obvious aim of American policy toward Iran is regime change. But Cockburn is asserting that Barack Obama literally has no sense. He is too stupid to see what Cockburn plainly (and rightly) sees.

Again, what's being said here? That Jews have some kind of occult power to control the minds of America's power elite and force them to act against their will? One really can't credit a writer like Cockburn with such a crude conception -- but something very like it is implicit in his wording. And of course, this idea is prevalent in many circles, on both the right and the left, who continually posit "wag the dog" scenarios about decent Americans being led astray by mesmerizing Israeli leaders and Homeland neo-cons.

. . .

[ninakat]

Obama: Not Cool, Just Cold-Blooded
Glen Ford, Jan. 31, 2012

President Obama thinks killing people around the globe with drones is as cool as singing Al Green at the Apollo. In a live Web interview, Obama assured his audience that the U.S. unmanned drone force – now thought to number in the thousands and ranging from deadly Predators and Reapers to aircraft the size of small birds – was “kept on a very tight leash.” So, here we have a secret weapons program that violates other countries’ airspace and kills their citizens at will – and even kills American citizens without charge or trial – and Obama thinks that all he is obligated to do is give assurances that the weapons are on a “tight leash.”

The issue is not whether the American commander-in-chief has made sure that the drones are under his control, but that the United States is waging a terroristic war against at least four nations – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, and possibly more – with not the slightest justification under international law.

The people of Iraq, who know a great deal about the effects of drones, are trying to figure out what their sovereignty and independence actually means when the U.S. State Department can fly drones above their cities as a safeguard to U.S. diplomatic installations. The question raised by Iraqis is not, Does Obama have those drones under tight controls, but Why is a foreign power, whose military was supposed to have left Iraq, flying aircraft in their skies? A New York Times article on Monday reported that the Iraqis’ were angry. But Obama dismissed their complaints as much ado about nothing; the article, he said was “a little bit overwritten.” I suppose Obama thinks he’s being cool, like breaking briefly into song at a Harlem fundraiser. But there is nothing cool about violating the territorial integrity of other countries – including nations like Iraq that Obama constantly describes as a U.S. ally.

Obama was too cool to let the U.S. Congress sweat him over the six-month aerial war waged by the United States and its NATO allies against the sovereign nation of Libya, at the conclusion of which Libya’s leader was murdered by U.S.-supported thugs. Obama apparently thought it was cool to stick a knife up Col. Gaddafi’s butt. The First Black President’s drones are busy over Somalia, whose government the U.S. and its African puppet allies overthrew in 2006, precipitating a humanitarian catastrophe that has only worsened as the U.S. war continues. All of Yemen is a killing zone for U.S. drones.

When the U.S. president arrogates to himself the right to bomb and kill at will, with no respect for national boundaries and sovereign rights, he makes himself an outlaw. So, I guess Obama is cool like Jesse James.

With his huge expansion of the drone terror wars and passage of preventive detention, Barack Obama has surpassed George Bush in lawlessness. But most Americans, especially African Americans, cannot imagine that Obama represents a danger to them. If George Bush had had thousands of drones that could fly up the hallway of an apartment building, ring the bell and assassinate whoever answered the door, Black folks would have been terrified. But, they're not scared of Obama, because he...is oh so cool.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

[ninakat]

Repulsive progressive hypocrisy
By Glenn Greenwald
Feb 8, 2012

During the Bush years, Guantanamo was the core symbol of right-wing radicalism and what was back then referred to as the “assault on American values and the shredding of our Constitution”: so much so then when Barack Obama ran for President, he featured these issues not as a secondary but as a central plank in his campaign. But now that there is a Democrat in office presiding over Guantanamo and these other polices — rather than a big, bad, scary Republican — all of that has changed, as a new Washington Post/ABC News poll today demonstrates:

The sharpest edges of President Obama’s counterterrorism policy, including the use of drone aircraft to kill suspected terrorists abroad and keeping open the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have broad public support, including from the left wing of the Democratic Party.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that Obama, who campaigned on a pledge to close the brig at Guantanamo Bay and to change national security policies he criticized as inconsistent with U.S. law and values, has little to fear politically for failing to live up to all of those promises.

The survey shows that 70 percent of respondents approve of Obama’s decision to keep open the prison at Guantanamo Bay. . . . The poll shows that 53 percent of self-identified liberal Democrats — and 67 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats — support keeping Guantanamo Bay open, even though it emerged as a symbol of the post-Sept. 11 national security policies of George W. Bush, which many liberals bitterly opposed.

Repulsive liberal hypocrisy extends far beyond the issue of Guantanamo. A core plank in the Democratic critique of the Bush/Cheney civil liberties assault was the notion that the President could do whatever he wants, in secret and with no checks, to anyone he accuses without trial of being a Terrorist – even including eavesdropping on their communications or detaining them without due process. But President Obama has not only done the same thing, but has gone much farther than mere eavesdropping or detention: he has asserted the power even to kill citizens without due process. As Bush’s own CIA and NSA chief Michael Hayden said this week about the Awlaki assassination: “We needed a court order to eavesdrop on him but we didn’t need a court order to kill him. Isn’t that something?” That is indeed “something,” as is the fact that Bush’s mere due-process-free eavesdropping on and detention of American citizens caused such liberal outrage, while Obama’s due-process-free execution of them has not.

Beyond that, Obama has used drones to kill Muslim children and innocent adults by the hundreds. He has refused to disclose his legal arguments for why he can do this or to justify the attacks in any way. He has even had rescuers and funeral mourners deliberately targeted. As Hayden said: ”Right now, there isn’t a government on the planet that agrees with our legal rationale for these operations, except for Afghanistan and maybe Israel.” But that is all perfectly fine with most American liberals now that their Party’s Leader is doing it:

Fully 77 percent of liberal Democrats endorse the use of drones, meaning that Obama is unlikely to suffer any political consequences as a result of his policy in this election year. Support for drone strikes against suspected terrorists stays high, dropping only somewhat when respondents are asked specifically about targeting American citizens living overseas, as was the case with Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni American killed in September in a drone strike in northern Yemen.

The Post‘s Greg Sargent obtained the breakdown on these questions and wrote today:

The number of those who approve of the drone strikes drops nearly 20 percent when respondents are told that the targets are American citizens. But that 65 percent is still a very big number, given that these policies really should be controversial.

And get this: Depressingly, Democrats approve of the drone strikes on American citizens by 58-33, and even liberals approve of them, 55-35. Those numbers were provided to me by the Post polling team.

It’s hard to imagine that Dems and liberals would approve of such policies in quite these numbers if they had been authored by George W. Bush.

(more repulsive progressive hypocrisy at the link)

[Bruce Dazzling]

Are liberals in favor of policies under Democratic President Barack Obama that they despised under Republican President George Bush? Sadly the answer is yes according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll. The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks down a piece by Glenn Greenwald on the topic including thoughts on Gitmo and drone strikes.

[NeonLX]

[Simulist]

Good one, Neon.

Republicans: humans, minus head and heart.

Democrats: humans, minus backbone.

America's "two party" system: fuckery for the mindless, the heartless, and the timid.

[ninakat]

Simulist, do you think it's possible that Democrats being spineless is simply a convenient political meme that helps insulate them from the harsher reality, which is that they're essentially as headless and heartless as their "rivals" on the other side? The "lack of backbone" thing seems to be the argument that Obamapologists use a lot -- that Obama just isn't strong enough to stand up to the evil Republicans. (Not to imply that you're an Obamapologist, not by a long shot!)

The other meme I hear a lot is "now if only the Democrats and Republicans could agree, then we'd start to see some really positive change." Uh no, the more they agree, the more concerned we should be. They agree on wars, they agree on building more nuclear power time bombs, they agree on debt.

I guess I just see them now as one and the same, and they intentionally use all kinds of excuses, real or implied, to hide their nefarious deeds in service to the mafia. Just a theory of a conspiratorial nature.

[Simulist]

I agree with you completely.

The officialdom of the Democratic Party is neither "spineless" nor does it "lack a backbone"; in fact, these people are precisely the same sorts of vicious, contemptible creatures that they pretend are their "opponents."

The common, garden-variety Democrat, however — who still buys into that sort of fuckery, year after year, election cycle after election cycle — is, in fact, spineless. And stupid.

[Bruce Dazzling]

Simulist, do you think it's possible that Democrats being spineless is simply a convenient political meme that helps insulate them from the harsher reality, which is that they're essentially as headless and heartless as their "rivals" on the other side?

[ninakat]

@Simulist -- Oh yeah, I sometimes forget about those garden-variety Democrats -- some of my neighbors and now-distant friends. Spineless indeed. Yeah, stupid too -- and it's their choice to be stupid. I have very little patience for their apathy. Thank god for my garden and my doggies and kitties and chickens. Sanity!

While I'm airing my disgust.... WTF is wrong with Bill Maher and George Clooney and Bruce Springsteen and other celebrities supporting this war criminal? Jesus, it's infuriating. Fucktards.

Maher pledges Obama PAC a million dollars

George Clooney endorses Obama
"I'm disillusioned by the people who are disillusioned by Obama, quite honestly, I am"

Bruce Springsteen Sitting Out 2012 but Backs Obama
Springsteen said he still supports Obama but expressed disappointment in his handling of the job market and home foreclosures and disapproved of the attention Obama paid to corporations rather than the middle class.

“I would like to have seen more activism in job creation sooner than it came. I would like to have seen people helped out, seen some of these [home] foreclosures stopped somehow,” Springsteen said.

Springsteen said Obama was “more friendly to corporations than I thought he would be, [and] there’s not as many middle-class or working-class voices heard in the administration as I thought there would be.”

But Springsteen did send a little praise Obama’s way, saying, “He kept GM alive, which was incredibly important to Detroit and Michigan, and he got the health care law passed, although I wish there had been a public option and didn’t leave the citizens victims of the insurance companies. He killed Osama bin Laden, which was extremely important. He brought some sanity to the top level of government.”

Springsteen’s “We Take Care of Our Own,” from his new album, “Wrecking Ball,” which debuts next month, appears on the official Obama playlist for campaign rallies and events this election.

[Simulist]

They're worse than whores.

(Because I have at least some respect for whores.)

[ninakat]

@Bruce -- perfect!