SPAM ------------------------------------- Re: Hopelessly Devoted

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"Barry Bruyea" <damnthet...@duck.com> wrote in message
news:8rq4r75uegsgkqen1...@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 15 May 2012 06:29:43 -0700 (PDT), Archie
> <aken...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>

[Unknown]

"Barry Bruyea" <damnthet...@duck.com> wrote in message
news:8rq4r75uegsgkqen1...@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 15 May 2012 06:29:43 -0700 (PDT), Archie
> <aken...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>

>>davidswanson
>>
>>You'd never know it from watching television, but there are many
>>thousands of people in the United States who take peace, justice,
>>environmental protection, and government of the people so seriously
>>that they don't censor themselves whenever the president is a
>>Democrat.
>>
>>While many others are still debating whether it would be appropriate
>>to criticize or protest President Obama after a mere three and a half
>>years of disaster, the people I have in mind have been openly and
>>honestly resisting the latest Wall Street war monger since before he
>>was elected.
>>
>>Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank have collected 56 essays from prior
>>to, from early on in, and from quite recently during the Obama
>>presidency. The collection, just published as Hopeless: Barack Obama
>>and the Politics of Illusion, has a consistent approach to its topic.
>>The authors, including Kevin Alexander Gray, Jeremy Scahill, Chris
>>Floyd, Sibel Edmonds, Franklin Spinney, Kathy Kelly, Marjorie Cohn,
>>Chase Madar, Michael Hudson, Medea Benjamin, Charles Davis, Ray
>>McGovern, Dave Lindorff, Bill Quigley, Tariq Ali, Andy Worthington,
>>Linn Washington, Jr., and many more, don't agree on everything. A few
>>try to urge serious progressive plans on Obama that they would never
>>have proposed that Bush champion, not even rhetorically, not even for
>>laughs. The book is not organized by topic; it's a random, if
>>chronological, ride through a catalog of catastrophes. But it's
>>united by the theme of horrendously bad government in the age of
>>Obama. It ignores the mythology and treats Obama based on his actual
>>performance.
>>
>>Reducing the charges against Obama developed in detail in this book to
>>a Declaration of Independence-like list of grievances might look
>>something like this:
>>
>>Obama has taken massive funding from Wall Street, appointed Wall
>>Streeters to top positions, and followed their lead, to the benefit of
>>banksters and the detriment of the rest of us. Obama, despite
>>promises the contrary, has put lobbyists in positions of power in his
>>administration. Senator Obama's corporatist vote for the Class Action
>>Fairness Act was in line with the rest of his performance as senator
>>and later president.
>>
>>Obama has taken massive funding from war profiteers and worked in
>>their interest, empowering a collection of war hawks from the George
>>W. Bush and Bill Clinton eras, and including no opponent of militarism
>>in any high office.
>>
>>Obama abandoned the people of Gaza to their fate beneath Israeli
>>bombs.
>>
>>Obama bailed out AIG, but not you or me.
>>
>>Obama delayed de-escalation in Iraq and tried every way he could to
>>avoid complete withdrawal.
>>
>>Obama has expanded secrecy, sought retribution against whistleblowers,
>>expanded warrentless spying, protected confessed torturers, revived
>>military commissions, and expanded the military.
>>
>>Obama has made anti-environmentalist corporate tools the heads of the
>>Departments of the Interior and Agriculture.
>>
>>Obama's administration facilitated and accepted a military coup in
>>Honduras.
>>
>>Obama has continued and expanded upon aggressively inhumane
>>immigration policies.
>>
>>Obama championed corporate health coverage over Medicare for All.
>>
>>Obama tripled the size of the war on Afghanistan.
>>
>>Obama has championed nuclear power.
>>
>>Obama has backed murderers in Colombia and put U.S. troops into that
>>country in the interests of big oil.
>>
>>Obama has dramatically escalated drone killings, developing a new type
>>of war.
>>
>>Obama has continued pointless killing in Afghanistan on the basis of
>>false pretenses.
>>
>>Obama has appointed a deeply flawed candidate to the Supreme Court.
>>
>>Obama has expanded the weaponization and the use of nuclear power in
>>space.
>>
>>Obama facilitated the kind of drilling that created the BP oil gusher
>>in the Gulf of Mexico, and then sought to cover up the extent of the
>>damage.
>>
>>Obama has kept tax breaks for billionaires in place, persuading his
>>followers to continue calling them "the Bush Tax Cuts."
>>
>>Obama has claimed the power to torture and to "rendition" prisoners
>>and kidnap victims to other countries that torture.
>>
>>Obama has promoted corporate culture and CEO heroes, while failing to
>>promote nonprofit groups -- a fantasy that contributing author Ralph
>>Nader proposes for Obama while never having proposed it for Bush.
>>
>>Obama has pushed deregulation as a solution to the problems caused by
>>deregulation.
>>
>>Obama has served Israel at the expense of human rights, peace, and
>>democracy.
>>
>>Obama has gone around Congress and courts to approve of Monsanto's
>>GMOs.
>>
>>Obama has tortured Bradley Manning.
>>
>>Obama has pushed U.S. weapons sales on foreign nations.
>>
>>Obama has punished Iranians with sanctions while threatening war.
>>
>>Obama has expanded nuclear weapons spending.
>>
>>Obama has worked largely against the interests of organized labor.
>>
>>Obama has sabotaged efforts to protect the earth's climate.
>>
>>Obama has thrown Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block.
>>
>>Obama has extended the worst parts of the PATRIOT Act, plus secret
>>parts we haven't seen yet but which are somehow nonetheless "law."
>>
>>Obama has militarized police forces, expanded wiretaps, prosecuted
>>Muslims for speech, raided activists' homes, preemptively detained
>>journalists, and supported the prison industrial complex and the
>>widespread use of solitary confinement.
>>
>>Obama has launched a fraudulent war on Libya as a "humanitarian"
>>effort, while aiding human rights abuses in Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi
>>Arabia, and elsewhere.
>>
>>Obama has abandoned his effort to close Guantanamo, which was only
>>ever -- in reality -- an effort to move one of the United States'
>>lawless concentration camps to Illinois from Cuba.
>>
>>Obama chose to pursue an insufficient economic stimulus bill, not to
>>mention increasing economically damaging military spending each year
>>thus far.
>>
>>Obama has continued the "war on drugs."
>>
>>And Obama has shut down activism in this country by appearing to be
>>what he is not and by virtue of the malady that causes millions of
>>people to believe that self-governance consists of cheering for one
>>team in a sporting competition.
>>
>>St. Clair and Frank describe Obama as "so innately conflict-averse
>>that even when pummeled with racist slurs he wouldn't punch back."
>>But Obama does not appear to try to minimize conflict across the
>>board. He avoids conflict with those on the right -- and often there
>>is little basis for, or value in, supposing that his mental state is
>>one of surrender as opposed to agreement.
>>
>>There are two things that Obama is able to count on. First, no matter
>>how seriously he attacks the interests of ordinary people, major
>>liberal groups will support him. Second, no matter how much he
>>supports the agenda of the right, major rightwing groups will attack
>>him while demanding more. These two states of affairs feed each
>>other. Attacks on Obama from the right are absolutely essential to
>>generating his liberal support. Obama is the Not-Romney candidate.
>>And that liberal support helps produce attacks from the right.
>>Hopeless could help some to break out of this cycle of guilt or
>>innocence by association.
>>
>>I'll leave you with a slightly modified verse from Paul Simon:
>>
>>Hopeless, hopeless
>>Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake
>>We are hopeless, we are hopeless
>>The moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake
>>
>>Somebody say ih hih ih hih ih
>>Somebody sing hello, hello, hello
>>Somebody say ih hih ih hih ih
>>Somebody cry why, why, why?
>>
>>http://warisacrime.org/content/hopelessly-devoted
>
>
> Lincoln may have been a little off base when he said "You can't fool
> all of the people all of the time." Obama is sure as hell giving it a
> damn good try.
>