The Eloquent Ankle Grabber

The news is full of details about the debt ceiling compromise reached in Congress and my BP is moving into dangerous territory. Breathe, baby, breathe. Most of the reporting in the mainstream media is sloppy, warmed-over BS passed along as truth or wisdom, neither of which can be found in Washington D.C. today. Let’s be clear: this manufactured crisis is a new low point in American politics, an insult, a slur, an epithet against the people. Today the New York Times repeated the fantasy that economic “catastrophe” has been averted, even though the deal was based on extortion from extreme members of the GOP. The Times also stated that no deal might have triggered a new “recession.” Huh? New recession? The only people who think we are not now mired in a recession are the big shots at Goldman Sachs, a few nitwit economists on the payroll of right-wing think tanks, and maybe the hacks President Obama takes advice from.

I have written several times before about Barrack Obama’s weak spine and teeny-weeny testicles, but this man of empty eloquence has outdone himself this time. To put it in blunt playground terms: Barrack Obama is a pussy. In the face of extortion, he caved; in the face of overheated rhetoric, he capitulated; in the face of a terrible plan that will have dire consequences for the country, he channeled Jimmy Carter and at the same time moved right of Richard Nixon. How the fuck he managed this bizarre contortion is beyond me, but he did. The cause of the deficit is inextricably linked to Republican policies of tax cuts for the rich, a stupid, endless global war on Muslim terrorists, and the financial implosion orchestrated by Wall Street bankers and speculators. Instead of mounting a ferocious counter-argument from the biggest bully pulpit on the planet, Obama meekly bends over, grabs his ankles and begs for more of the same: “OK, boys, give it to me harder this time. Ram it up there. Harder. Faster. Make it hurt so good.” My grandmother once told me that Richard Nixon had the instincts of a Mafia don; as much as I despised Tricky Dick, I have to admit that he would never willingly bend over and take it up the ass.

Obama is John Boehner’s bitch. Obama allows congressional Republicans to line up and piss in his face. This isn’t the hope and change I voted for in 2008. Obama has moved far beyond being a mere disappointment; he’s now a joke and a disgrace. Candidate Obama bears no resemblance to the serial coward and habitual capitulator that occupies the White House. Might as well elect Sarah “Shit-for-Brains” Palin or Michelle “Homosexuality-is-a-Sin” Bachmann in 2012 and crash the republic all at once rather than bit by bit. Watching Boehner and Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell bitch slap Obama whenever they wish is painful. Why won’t the man stand up and fight? Does he really believe that there’s nothing he can do because the GOP controls one house of Congress – or is he, at bottom, a fellow Kool-Aid addict who believes that Republican prescriptions for the economy will help put people back to work?

Now that the burning question of the summer – will Harry Potter finally vanquish Lord Valdamort, save Hogwart’s and hook up with Ginny Weasley – has been answered, we need to find out who stole Obama’s soul and how we can get it back.

The Last Straw

It’s only a matter of time before House Democrats pass the President’s tax giveaway to the GOP. Nancy Pelosi must be feeling pressure from the White House, the right wing echo chamber, the corporate media and any number of spineless Democrats. When it’s all said and done, signed and delivered, the President will claim victory for bipartisanship, but this claim will be as empty as the one Obama made the other day when he said that most economists think this absurd gift to the GOP will stimulate the economy.

Here’s what’s more likely to happen.

First, the federal deficit is going to get worse – much worse.

The gulf between the wealthy and the rest of us will get wider – much wider.

The temporary payroll tax holiday will hurt Social Security in the long run, exacerbating fears that the trust fund will not be able to meet its commitments; this will fuel calls from the GOP to reduce benefits, raise the retirement age or, at long last, end Social Security as we know it by privatizing the program.

The “temporary” tax cuts will become permanent because no politician of either party is going to suggest letting them expire in 2012. No matter what’s happening with the economy, the cuts will remain, starving the government of the revenue it needs to function. This is precisely what right-wing Republicans want to happen.

What argument will Obama fall back on when this middling “stimulus” fails to jumpstart the economy? What will he say when the official unemployment rate remains stuck between nine and ten percent and the true rate is up around seventeen?

The Democrats allowed themselves to be boxed in by the GOP and now they are stuck with what will be. This is Obama’s recession now.

The GOP offered one economic policy during the Bush reign, one policy prescription for every situation, one policy rain or shine, fire or flood, earthquake or tsunami: tax cuts. And how did that singular policy work out? The rich reaped the vast majority of the benefits, economic growth was anemic, the federal deficit ballooned, real wages for working people stayed dead flat or declined, and household debt exploded.

That’s the legacy of the GOP’s obsession with cutting taxes. It didn’t work last decade and it won’t work in this one.

If You See the President's Spine, Please Call

President Obama is wandering around the White House, looking under sofas and behind doors and in closets for his spine.

I’m sitting here in disbelief, having just watched the President’s press conference on the deal he “negotiated” with the GOP on taxes. Obama defended the deal and slammed liberals for being sanctimonious purists, and even said that he was willing to take John Boehner at his word.

Take John Boehner at his word? The Sultan of NO, the Lord of Obstruction, the King of Corruption?

It’s clear that Obama is feeling the pressure because he’s talking complete gibberish, like when he compared the tax debate to the debate over the public health care option. He can’t be serious…the public health insurance option was pushed off the table and buried before one word was said about it…right about the time the health industry lobbyists came in to write the damn bill.

The Republicans gave up nothing and got more than what they asked for from the President. There was no reason to couple extension of the Bush tax cuts with an extension of unemployment benefits. None at all. The issues should have been considered separately.

Obama can spin it any way he wants, send the Vice President out to do the same, dispatch David Axelrod to jaw on Good Morning America, rev up the Obama for America machine, but the fact is that he allowed the GOP to box him in, knock him on his butt and then rub his face in the dirt.

As a percentage of GDP, Americans are not heavily taxed, so all this talk about taxes, taxes, taxes is bizarre. In point of fact, tax rates have fallen for years, particularly for high income people, which is a key reason why the gulf between haves and have nots in America is so dramatic.

The tax cuts will have a minor stimulative effect on jobs and consumer spending and a major impact on the size of the Federal deficit. Two or three years from now, the GOP will claim from every rooftop that America will default, implode or collapse unless spending is slashed to reduce the deficit, and the first programs the GOP will go for will be the same ones they always zero in on: Social Security and Medicare. Not defense spending. Not corporate tax rates. Not farm subsidies. Social Security and Medicare. Got to gut or kill those entitlement programs or the sky will fall.

President Obama is an intelligent man but he’s behaving like a captive. He talks about fighting back, but if he was ever going to roll up his sleeves and get his knuckles bloody, this was the fight, this was the issue, and this was the time. Instead of fighting, the President walked to his corner and sat on his stool.

The presidential spine is on the lam. If you see it on a street in your city or town, please call the White House immediately.

The Real Obama

I didn’t recognize the fiery guy speaking to college students in Wisconsin. He looked like President Obama but spoke like candidate Obama – the man I cast my vote for in 2008 -- and watched take the oath of office on a cold January day a few months later.

Hope was in the air. Bush and Cheney were no more. A fresh wind was blowing across the country. But then a strange thing happened – or perhaps it wasn’t strange at all. When Obama moved into the White House he lost his mojo and began behaving like a typical corporate Democrat.

Now Obama chastises the very people who worked their tails off to get him elected.

That’s what I call audacity. It takes large balls to hector your political base, particularly when your party stands an excellent chance of being shellacked in the mid-term elections.

It’s one thing to ignore the concerns of your base for a year and a half while surrounding yourself with Clinton-era apparatchiks, Goldman Sachs alumni, the likes of Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, and quite another to accuse your base of apathy.

Hey, Obama, who betrayed whom here?

But OK, let’s be fair. Barack Obama began his presidency in a hole filled with stagnant, foul-smelling water. Generally speaking, Americans have the collective memory of a goldfish and most people have forgotten the mess George W. Bush and Dick Cheney left the country in; those cretins handed Obama the keys to a ruined country and beat it out of Washington D.C.

On the other hand, Obama didn’t do himself any favors by stocking his team with the very people who planted and nurtured the seeds of our financial meltdown. Let’s not forget, amnesiac America, that it was Bill Clinton who passed NAFTA and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, Bill Clinton who made happy with Robert Rubin and the moguls of Corporate America, and Bill Clinton who triangulated the Democratic Party so far toward the center that at times it’s indistinguishable from the GOP.

For a year and a half all we’ve seen is the passionless version of Obama, a cerebral, cool-headed, fair-minded fellow who allows himself to be maligned by right-wing radio hacks, Tea Party nut jobs, racists, and limp dicks like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. Obama has spent more time defending himself against charges that he is a closet Muslim than he has pushing an agenda that might help working Americans.

Obama squandered his political advantage (deep public support and Democratic control of the House and Senate) on tepid financial system reforms, a gutless health care overhaul, a failed program to assist homeowners facing foreclosure, and a sucker bet on Afghanistan. He bought in to deficit hysteria and the trumped up Social Security crisis. He hasn’t done squat on the environmental front except spew misinformation about “clean” coal.

On a progressive report card, Obama gets a D-minus.

But more egregious still is the way Obama and his team completely misread the economic hardship that has hammered average Americans since 2009. The Wall Street-centric advisors surrounding Obama bailed out the banks and made sure the financial sector was protected, while leaving the working class to fend for itself at a time when only government can provide jobs in sufficient numbers to start a real recovery.

When bold proposals were needed, Obama offered half measures. When the situation demanded a coherent narrative of what Democrats stand for and whose interests they represent, Obama remained aloof, speaking in nuanced terms and reaching his hand across the aisle only to have the GOP spit in his palm.

When it was time to come out of his corner swinging, Obama came out holding a wilted olive branch.

Now, with his poll numbers sliding toward oblivion and John Boehner measuring Nancy Pelosi’s office for new drapes and carpet, Obama hits the campaign trail to fire up the base and the last of the believers. The man still makes a stirring speech, but hope and change are hard sells now, with the gap between rich and poor Americans wider than at any time since the Roaring 20’s, unemployment high and holding, and more Americans living in poverty than there have been in 50 years.

The audacity of hope has morphed into cowardice, the promise of change into protection of the status quo.

Will the real Obama stand up and remain standing before it’s too late?

The Somber Smorgasbord

ABC News described Obama’s Iraq speech as “somber,” and that’s certainly a fitting tone for a Commander in Chief calling an end to combat operations after seven years and more than 4,000 American soldiers killed and thousands wounded.

But it was also a carefully crafted speech that offered a little something for everyone. For military folks there were the standard platitudes about bravery, sacrifice and honor; for those who see the Iraq invasion and occupation as a colossal blunder based on fabricated evidence and false justifications, the President made the nexus between the cost of the war and the dearth of domestic investment in jobs, infrastructure and education that has millions of Americans facing a uncertain future. For the hawks and imperialists Obama promised to destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan and transform that ravaged land into a bulwark against the terrorists. For the benefit of Republicans, Obama even mentioned George W. Bush, the man who enthusiastically pushed the button that unleashed the horror of war on Iraq.

Call it a somber smorgasbord.

Missing from the speech was any mention of Abu Ghraib or the thousands of Iraqis who were killed during the shock and awe invasion and the long, bloody occupation. The New York Times reported that number as 100,000 dead – independent observers have pegged the number as high as 600,000. Americans should not forget the thousands of Iraqis displaced from their homes – either by the invasion or the sectarian strife that followed. I wonder if we have any idea of the number of Iraqis maimed, deformed or crippled as the result of our effort to free them from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, find Weapons of Mass Destruction or give Iraq the gift of democracy.

Obama referred to the Iraqis as our “partners” and noted our common interests though he didn’t elaborate on what those interests might be. Obviously, the United States has an abiding interest in Iraq’s oil reserves, though American multinationals didn’t fare well in the oil contract sweepstakes. The United States would love for Iraq to check Iran’s power and influence in the region, but that’s unlikely to happen given that Iraq cannot even form a government six months after holding elections.

50,000 American troops and thousands of private contractors remain in Iraq, housed in gargantuan bases that resemble small American cities. If the tables were turned, the world upended, if Iraq had occupied America, how would Americans feel if the end of combat operations meant that 50,000 Iraqi soldiers would remain on our soil?

Truth is a casualty of war, and in the years ahead America’s imperial adventure in Iraq will be spun and revised and retold as a heroic, altruistic campaign, undertaken with pure motives and the noblest of intentions. This won’t be a difficult undertaking since many Americans already believe – despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary – that Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Myth will become history and history will become truth. In a few short years it will be as if none of the horrible things ever happened, as if the Iraqi people greeted our soldiers with flowers and cheering, just as Donald Rumsfeld promised they would.

Victory was one thing Obama could not claim the other night because there was never anything to win by invading Iraq.

State of Disunion or The Great American Circle Jerk

With assistance from a bottle of zinfandel, I watched the entire State of the Union address, an event that always strikes me as a somewhat silly spectacle -- the ruling class coming together in order to congratulate itself. The pols shake hands and slap one another on the back, and even those that despise one another make nice for the TV cameras. I wonder how many of them are drunk on expensive booze provided by industry lobbyists. I wonder why John Boehner from Ohio looks like he just returned from a week in the Bahamas – but of course Boehner always looks like that, so a better question is: how much time does this jackass spend in a tanning salon? Why does the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court look so smug?

As Obama found his rhythm and laid out a laundry list of initiatives that will never come to pass, one could easily get the impression that things in America, Inc., are hunky-dory. The financial meltdown was bad, but it could have been worse if the Obama Administration had not acted as it did. I was encouraged to hear Obama admit that he hated the big bank bailout, though last I looked Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers were still on his economic team, and that Wall Street-adoring-duo seems to believe that the bank rescue was a perfectly acceptable and wise use of taxpayer money.

Obama tossed crumbs to this group and that, a tax cut here, a small business assist there, all designed to give the appearance of forward momentum, though never was the prevailing order seriously challenged. The rules and parameters of the game remain the same.

I was pleased to hear Obama remind (finally!) the Republicans of the deep hole his administration started in – a hole dug by eight years of Bush-Cheney and Republican majority misrule and corruption. Lest we forget the Bush-Cheney-GOP scorecard: two costly wars, a ruined financial sector, anemic job growth, huge debt, and runaway health care costs. On the other hand, I was dumbfounded when Obama stumped for “safe” nuclear power (no such thing), expanded off shore oil drilling, and the myth of “clean” coal. That’s not the change in energy or environmental policy I voted for.

Obama makes a fine speech, no doubt about it, but what happens now? Will he retreat to the sidelines once again and allow lobbyists and Congress to dominate the agenda? Times are bad, make no mistake – you only have to look at California to understand how bad – and we desperately need a president who can channel FDR, not Herbert Hoover.

It’s hard to argue with Obama’s assertion that Washington has created a deficit of trust. Polls consistently make clear that Americans want a comprehensive publicly funded health insurance system like Medicare, but the politicians won’t deliver it – and even worse, few of them, including Obama himself, are brave enough to try. Expanding Medicare for all Americans was never on the table.

The real State of the Union circle jerk takes place in the media – before the speech and for days thereafter, on talk radio and all the major TV networks. The coverage and commentary on Fox News is the most out of touch with reality, as if Hannity and Company watched an entirely different speech. CNN’s coverage takes top prize for sheer ridiculousness – with its large cast of talking heads, high tech props, and breathless analysis of Twitter messages. Sweet Jesus, no wonder the American people are so easily duped.

I don’t quit, Obama said, and the American people don’t quit. I’m sure about the latter – at least when the people are allowed to play the game fairly and with a stake in the outcome. For the past thirty years, however, the game has been rigged in favor of the wealthy, in favor of corporate power, in favor of the few at the expense of the many. The balance of power has tilted too drastically to one side, and so the ship of state lists, takes on water, and threatens to sink.

Men And Their Balls

The “progressive” community, liberals, people who lean left on the American political spectrum, are deeply concerned about Barrack Obama. OK, that’s an understatement. Ticked off, disappointed, angry, worried, incensed, furious and depressed is more like it.

Obama says the right things with eloquence rarely matched in American politics, but when the last perfect note fades away, he does little if anything to make his soaring rhetoric reality. When faced with opposition from the whack jobs of the dying GOP, the tea baggers, Limbaugh, Hannity and Coulter, he folds his tent and slinks into the shadows.

We expected so much more. There was no direction to go but up. George and Dick were finally leaving the stage. Hope was in the air when Obama swore his oath on that chilly January day almost one year ago. The hoopla, the crowds, the music, the excitement, the flags and banners and posters – how remote it all feels now. The economy’s feeble, the titans of Wall Street are laughing as they fuck their mistresses on mattresses stuffed with $100 bills, the insurance lobby is licking its chops over health care “reform,” and we’re upping the ante in Afghanistan. What’s changed?

Not much. Obama the commodity was sold with a slogan, like toothpaste or hemorrhoid ointment. “Change We Can Believe In.” Sure. And Chevron really cares about the environment. And the Easter bunny is real. And there’s a leprechaun sitting on a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

We’re knee deep in the politics of fear and failure, knee deep in limp-dicked efforts to turn the ship of state, knee deep in preening and posturing on the White House lawn. Obama the intelligent incrementalist -- two steps up, one back, one to the side, throw in a little Ali shuffle for good measure -- can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man; slippery when wet, like Bill Clinton and his maddening triangulation strategies.

George W. Bush had an undersized brain and oversized balls. Bush was a faux cowboy from Yale who shot first and questioned later. When the overgrown frat boy wasn’t mooning the world or deferring the tough decisions to Uncle Dick, he was playing Christian crusader, bombing the shit out of innocent Muslims.

Barrack Hussein Obama possesses a large, capable brain and a silver tongue, but his balls are no larger than BB’s -- teeny-weeny things swinging in the presidential scrotum sack. The man can think, the man can speak, the man cuts a fine figure but he can’t get shit done for the folks even with a friendly Congress. Obama has surrounded himself with corporate-friendly types and Clinton-era recycles, and he nuances every damn thing until it’s unrecognizable – like Bill Clinton describing what constitutes the sex act to a federal judge.

Like tired whores we hoped for more. We hoped, for once, that the pimp would take his money and forgo the beating. No such luck. Back on our knees, bowing down before the moneyed class, the political elites, the corporate lawyers and lobbyists, the fixers and the cheats, the charlatans and the untouchable criminals. This is America, this is the dream, this is the one nation under God, better than all the others.

After Bush and Cheney, we needed to believe again, but we elected a man with tiny balls. Guess the joke’s on us and our children and their children. This is what betrayal feels like.

LBJ Rides Again

The era is different. The terrain is different. The culture is different. Yet the similarities between Barack Obama and Lyndon Johnson are remarkable, and the chances of history repeating itself are an odds-makers dream. The Vietnam conflict ruined LBJ’s presidency and derailed his domestic agenda, just as Afghanistan will likely doom Obama’s presidency at a time in America’s history when the country can least afford for him to fail.

LBJ feared the political consequences of appearing weak on Vietnam just as Obama is deathly afraid of appearing wimpy on Afghanistan. Like LBJ in Vietnam, Obama desires to “finish” the job in Afghanistan, though what that job is remains a shifting target.

The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 in order to root out al-Qaeda terrorists, their Taliban supporters, and to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Superior military firepower allowed the US to rout the Taliban, but Osama bin Laden remains at large, possibly hiding in Pakistan. It is unlikely bin Laden would still be free or alive without a wink and a nod from the Pakistani government – a purported ally of the US in the Global War on Terror and a major recipient of US funding. Pakistan is a key but wildly unpredictable variable in the Afghanistan conflict; for good or ill we’re in bed with a country we cannot trust any more than we can trust the government of Hamid Kharzai.

There’s an element of Keystone Cop in the U.S.’s pursuit of bin Laden. Bill Clinton tried to take bin Laden out with cruise missiles; W. Bush used cowboy rhetoric and an invasion and occupation that have cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars; and now Obama seems determined to continue Bush’s misadventure. Despite all this, not to mention the best efforts of the CIA, NSA, DIA and NATO, bin Laden is still alive and dreaming of global jihad.

Now, after months of careful deliberation that has been criticized by the GOP as “dithering,” even though the GOP’s man, W. Bush, bumbled around in Afghanistan for nearly seven years, Obama will dispatch some 30,000 more American troops to the Afghan quagmire. While the number of troops is less than requested by Stan McChrystal, the American commander, Obama will ask, beg, plead, browbeat and threaten our NATO allies to give 6,000 or more additional troops to the meat grinder, providing McChrystal the magic number he wanted from the beginning. Why NATO countries should cough up more soldiers is a mystery, since Afghanistan is clearly America’s war.

By sending fewer than 40,000 American troops, Obama can claim that he’s not a puppet of the Generals, even though he is because not sending thousands more troops was never a serious policy consideration. This is another of those instances where failure is redefined, packaged and sold to the public as success. Will the people buy it? Probably. Millions of Americans are distracted by the rigors of everyday life, deeply worried about keeping or finding a job, making the mortgage payment, or putting food on the table. The economy is fucked – at least for people who work for wages, but things aren’t yet so bad that our government can’t waste billions chasing phantoms in Afghanistan.

When he addresses the nation next Tuesday to justify the troop increase, Obama will appear and sound reasoned, reasonable, realistic and resolved; he will talk about our national security, our freedom and perhaps our way of life in language that will soar and may even inspire. Unlike W. Bush, Obama probably won’t refer to the American people as the chosen ones or toss in many references to God, and in itself this will be a relief, but the bottom line is that the U.S. will be stuck in Afghanistan for years and perhaps decades to come, unable to “win” the conflict or cut its losses and leave. The Soviets poured more than 100,000 soldiers into Afghanistan in the 1980’s and got their clocked cleaned.

I’m afraid the same unfortunate fate awaits us. History may not repeat in exactly the same way, but repeat it does when people are too stupid or stubborn to heed history’s lessons.

Duck, Cover & Cave

The battle is as good as over. President Obama sodomized his supporters over health insurance reform, just like he did when his administration had a golden opportunity to rein in Wall Street criminals. Despite his smooth style and golden tongue, Obama has caved to pressure from the GOP right and the all-powerful insurance lobby. The bastard wouldn’t even call the so-called public option by its proper title: Medicare for All.

The status quo wins again. This is no real surprise – even with a highly popular president whose party controls both houses of congress – because the insurance lobby has stymied health insurance reform for decades. When the dust settles in the next month or so, and a weak, ineffective bill emerges from congress, Obama will claim victory, but it will be of the pyrrhic variety. Millions of Americans will remain uninsured, and millions more will continue to lose battles with Cigna, Aetna and United Health over care decisions that belong in the hands of physicians but are made by insurance underwriters based on profit not health; personal bankruptcies resulting from medical expenses will also continue largely unabated.

Eric Alterman, who writes for the Nation and other national publications, said last fall that Obama would disappoint us; I figured he would, too, but hoped he would wait until at least midway through his first term. Like Bill Clinton, Obama talks a great game, hits the right notes in his speeches and public appearances, but when push comes to shove and his opponents go on offense, Obama folds like a dandy-lion in a hurricane.

Another similarity between Obama and Bill Clinton is Obama’s love fest with corporate interests. Obama had everything necessary – public opinion, numerous examples of corporate greed and incompetence -- to rein Wall Street in and instead abrogated his power by surrounding himself with the likes of Lawrence Summers, Tim Geithner and Robert Rubin, not to mention a number of lesser alumni from Goldman Sachs. No wonder that Obama went soft on the speculators, crooks, and swindlers who brought our financial system to the brink and laid an enormous hurt on average working Americans.

Inauguration Day was the high water mark of the Obama Administration and the trip has been downhill since. Our President has no one to blame but himself for a fatal absence of cajones. Think back to when George W. Bush and the GOP held sway – that posse of greedheads and power mongers rammed bills through congress and treated Democrats like lackeys. Hell, Bush even sold the world a war without a shred of factual justification, and when the world balked, Bush laughed and pulled the trigger anyway. Because of Dick Cheney, Bush had a better understanding of power politics than Obama or any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson. Politics is war, and in war you don’t seek to make friends with your opponents, you destroy them.

Typical fucking Democratic Party. Give them Congress and the White House and they still can’t get anything of consequence accomplished. This is change we can believe in? This is the second coming, the end of business as usual? Another bill of goods has been sold by a graduate of the Ivy League.

The Presidential Version Of Oprah

Where is the change Barrack Obama spoke so eloquently about when he was campaigning for the presidency? When are his actions going to measure up to his soaring rhetoric? Six months into his first term, Obama has shown that he is cool and smooth, articulate as the day is long, attuned to the political vibrations in DC and a compelling photo op when he and Michelle stroll across the White House lawn, but where’s the change, where’s the substance? Obama sneezes and his well-oiled PR machine cranks out an e-mail blast; Obama shoots hoops with inner-city kids and five million text messages are launched; Obama cracks a joke at the pyramids in Egypt and it’s on YouTube in a matter of minutes.

Obama is a wonderful show after the desolation, corruption and stupidity of the Bush-Cheney junta, but the status quo in America is still alive and thriving. Not that any but the most naive observers expected Obama to honestly challenge the status quo or deliver on his many campaign promises, for politicians rarely keep the promises they make in the heat of a campaign. And let’s not forget that the Obama Administration was behind the eight ball from Day One. Still, it’s hard to reconcile how Obama could campaign so boldly and govern so timidly; how with majorities in both houses of Congress and enormous popularity he can be cowed by the warp and wail of Rush Limbaugh and the nitwits from Fox News.

Six months into the Obama Administration, the Whacky Right, aided and abetted by a handful of pusillanimous Democrats, still control the national agenda. We can’t have a sensible discussion about creating an economic system that best meets the needs of the majority of Americans; health care reform is doomed to fail; ditto any meaningful action on the environment or energy policy; average Americans are suffering economic hardship and all the mainstream media can talk about is the stock market; nobody speaks with any intelligence about jobs and wages.

It’s depressing. A great opportunity is slipping away.

When the GOP controlled both houses of Congress they rammed their pet policies into law, stomping Democrats in the process. Tom DeLay lived to fuck Democrats in the ass, and his GOP comrades swaggered through the corridors of power like SS storm troopers. Put Democrats in the power position and they act bewildered.

Obama is the presidential version of Oprah. He makes us feel good, from time to time he makes us think, but in the end little changes. Powerful, vested interests still rule, call the shots and dictate the terms by which the majority of citizens must abide.

Yes, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are light years better than Bush and Cheney, but if that’s the standard by which we measure Obama’s success, we’re really in deep trouble.

State of the Status Quo

The State of the Union address is an odd and atavistic piece of political theatre. I know of no institution other than the United States Congress that gives itself a standing ovation for doing absolutely nothing. Stand up, clap, sit down, clap, stand up – you get the idea; it’s about as silly as your average high school graduation ceremony. Watching men and women who can’t agree on anything -- and will without a moment’s hesitation screw one another, not to mention the people whose interests they purport to represent – laughing, smiling and yukking it up is disgusting.

To be honest, I missed Dick Cheney’s scowl and George W. Bush’s tortured sentences; I missed the stark contrast between good and evil, black and white, cowboy and Indian; I missed the hubris and the absolute certainty that Bush displayed in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

As my seven-year-old daughter says, “Those were good times, bro, good times.”

Well, not really. It’s not comforting or inspiring to know that the leader of your nation is a corrupt moron.

Obama did his best to stem the naked Fear that is sweeping across the land. The fat is deep in the fire and most people are hip to the fact that the “stimulus” package alone probably won’t succeed in lifting the nation from the doldrums. Obama said as much. But then, Obama said a lot of things; some that made Democrats leap to their feet, others that were designed to reassure Republicans that he isn’t a crazed Marxist intent on dismantling American capitalism.

Obama didn’t throw out words like “Accountability,” “Responsibility” or “Private Enterprise” by accident.

He didn’t talk about reducing the size of the Federal deficit by chance either, even though the odds of that happening in the next few years are longer than the odds of the Oakland Raiders winning next year’s Super Bowl.

Democrats wet their pants when Obama laid out a three-legged strategy for an American renaissance: energy independence, health care reform and a renewed emphasis on education. I can’t disagree with that trio, but the pragmatist within me knows it’s easy to propose such initiatives, and next to impossible to turn them into effective legislation. In this country, nothing is harder to change than the status quo. Americans don’t do what’s sensible and morally right – Americans do what’s profitable.

How much interest do you think American energy conglomerates have in renewable fuels when the petroleum status quo pays them handsomely; they will fight tooth and nail to protect that Golden Goose. Same goes for health care. Obama didn’t specify what his health care reform plan might look like, though the only sensible, cost-effective system is Universal care like that found in every nation in the industrialized world. But again, American insurance companies have an enormous profit stake in the status quo, no matter how sick, broken and inefficient it may be.

There’s a reason we’ve been talking about Universal health care since Harry Truman occupied the White House, just as there’s a reason we’ve talked about alternative sources of energy since the early 1970’s. If the lobbyists, shills, PR flaks and congress people have their way, we’ll be talking until 100 million Americans have no medical insurance and gasoline costs $8.25 a gallon.

You don’t believe that corporations would place their narrow interests above the interests of the nation as a whole? When the camera cut away from Obama and framed John Boehner and Eric Cantor, what do you think those two gentlemen were talking about? “Reform health care! Sure, sure that will happen when pigs sprout wings and pigeons stop shitting on statues.” Boehner and Cantor were having a grand time swapping strategies to protect their campaign contributors from any measure that smacks of “reform.”

Other than when he mentioned “clean coal,” a fantasy on a par with Ronald Reagan’s infatuation with the Star Wars missile defense shield, Obama made the kind of speech we’ve come to expect from him. I want to believe that Obama can inspire the country to wake up and make meaningful changes, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

The Great Black Hope

Every year the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday prompts me to think about where the United States stands along its evolutionary path, not only in regard to race relations, but also in measurements of economic and social justice, militarism and our foreign relations. Though Dr. King is best and rightly remembered for his civil rights work, he gave considerable thought and attention to these other matters.

This MLK holiday is obviously different than any that has come before. Tomorrow at noon eastern time, Barack Obama will recite the oath of office and become the first African-American to hold the highest elected office in the land. Given the African-American experience in this country, the legacy of slave chains, codified status as three-fifths a human being, Jim Crow, lynching’s, official and de facto segregation, terrorism and intimidation, murder and oppression, down the bones and down the years, the inauguration of Barack Obama marks more than the breaking of a racial barrier.

America is growing up and finally reaching for its promise.

An intelligent, articulate black man is poised to lead the United States and, in many respects, the world, out of a pit dug by a president and vice-president who disdained the rule of law and every measure of justice that Dr. King struggled for during his short, purposeful life. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney condoned injustice and advanced inequality in a manner unprecedented in my lifetime, and maybe in our history as a nation. Bush and Cheney played to our fears and baser instincts, governed for the few rather than the many, made a mockery of what it means to be an American, and demeaned us in the eyes of the world.

Barack Obama is a man, not a savior, and while our hopes for his presidency soar we must temper our expectations. Our debased politics, grotesquely unequal economy, precarious environmental position, and obsessive focus on material gain cannot be solved in six months, a year, even four years. We’re in very deep waters and our ship of state is listing to one side. Even with a man of Barack Obama’s skill and character at the helm, we may sink.

Dr. King often said that resilience and fortitude were traits inculcated in black Americans by their direct experience in the crucible of the American contradiction. All Americans need that kind of transcendent resilience and fortitude now, for some of the most difficult challenges we’ve ever faced lie on the other side of tomorrow’s festivities. The stakes are enormous; the consequences of inaction or timid half-measures will be severe; no American should be immune or exempted from some form of sacrifice.

The dominant narrative of the past quarter century held that Americans rose or fell individually. This proved an illusion as damning as it is false. Dr. King knew it in his time; Barack Obama knows it in ours.