JANUARY 25, 2012 7:25PM

Obama's Ongoing Kill-the-Liberal, Anti-Social Justice Agenda

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RE-POST from 1-26-10, Correntewire:

 This view from outside Obamaworld is that Obama is a corrupt community organizer. That is, he is a corrupt organizer of a corrupt and profoundly wounded national community. The lack of protection by and sense of responsibility, an "ability to respond", of an amoral "legacy" leadership, now Obama, is dooming what is left of our democracy and our collective and individual security.

The progressive messengers of this serious plight are clamoring for their leaders and fellow citizens to fight the seduction of corruption, denial, minimization and cronyism. These messengers are pursuing with their truth to power (and the rest of us) an intelligent, personable and eloquent president who seems to have no conscience over breaking passionate, large-scale promises for the common good that won him the election. They also are pushing against a collection of Congress people so deeply enmeshed in bribe-taking they seem to have ears only for their often out of state corporate donor "constituency" at the critical expense of their oath-taken geographical one, as well as a sustained fear of a corporate-owned, reckless and shallow media always willing to negatively spin all that is anti-corporate.

Before focusing on some compelling and timely messages from some of the best and the brightest of our progressive messengers, let me acknowledge a current message from a conservative messenger, David Brooks. Mr. Brooks seems bent on "killing the (liberal) messengers" or at least patronizing and minimizing their messages. Labeling these liberals as destabilizers of our present society.


Mr. Brooks writes:



Wow. Combative divisiveness? How has it been working for us so far, Mr. Brooks, sans combative divisiveness? Steamroller, economic raping of the working and middle class by corporate pirates I would call it, in my "crude, populist," hyperbolic way. Our values and perceptions have been and are being discounted so thoroughly by this administration, both legacy parties and the corporate media. We progressives and our ideas, permanently "off the table, banned from the room" in terms of Obama's think-tanking. And we populists are the ones Mr. Brooks accuses of Us vs. Them obstructionism? DeMint's savoring health care failure as Obama's Waterloo ... not so much, apparently. It is our divisive warning-rantings that are preventing a functional and harmonious national recovery?



James Thindwa, in In These Times speaks of the earnest quest to disenfranchise concerned liberals. He speaks of a frightening framing done by Obama himself, lauding his own "centrism" as a generalized indication of some kind of intellectual and unbiased balance while he is at the same time jettisoning basic liberal principles -- principles he more than implied he stood for during his campaign.

In recent weeks, some Democratic pundits have sought to silence the left. Instead of encouraging progressives to heed the example Obama himself once set as a community organizer, they countenance the sacrifice of core liberal principles such as reproductive rights, corporate accountability and inclusion of immigrants.


In other words, the President represents the “sensible center.” The left—those who demand a healthcare program that does not further enrich greedy insurance companies—are the extremists. The center is occupied by the likes of Sens Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who would hold hostage millions of uninsured in order to protect corporate profits. The center belongs to conservatives such as Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), whose obsession with abortion trumps any concern for the 45,000 people who die every year for lack of health insurance.

By reducing left-right differences on healthcare to merely “unyielding ideological camps,” the president and his defenders ignore the deep moral divide between progressives and conservatives. The left’s push for universal healthcare is grounded in the long-held principle of social justice, the same one that produced the New Deal, gave us Medicare in 1965 and ushered in a new era in civil rights.


Chris Hedges addresses the "kill the liberal" agenda of the political elite and the deadly dangerousness of what he labels an "inverted totalitarianism" escalating in America:










Bob Herbert focuses on the dizzying discordance between Obama's words and actions. Anti-war, escalating the war; opponent of health insurance mandates, promoting mandates as the "centerpiece" of his plan; professing change but stocking his administration with Wall Street insiders and hastening to enrich the bank accounts of the corporations. Mr. Herbert ruefully observes that suddenly Obama is transitioning to ingratiate himself to the people who elected him. In Herbert's words, he "is now trying to present himself as a born-again populist."




Dan Froomkin, too, expresses concern over the consequences of a spending freeze and the deficit-road Obama is choosing:

But deficit hawkery right now is not just ludicrous, it's dangerous. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman noted recently, "the calls we're already hearing for an end to stimulus, for reversing the steps the government and the Federal Reserve took to prop up the economy, will grow even louder."




Froomkin also focuses on the imminent, recurring danger of the unregulated banks with their bogus accounting rules and lack of transparency.



Paul Craig Roberts sums up the horrifying dangers of so-called corporate capture of our government and its leadership:

In other words, tax money is being diverted to the pockets of private businesses. This is par for the course in “capitalist” America.

In today’s America, Karl Marx’s criticisms of capitalism are understated. Wherever one looks, the scene is one of the government using taxpayers’ money to enrich private interests. Taxes are collected from people who can barely make it, and the revenues are transferred to multi-millionaires and billionaires. The federal government piles debt on the backs of heavily-burdened and dispossessed Americans in order that investment banksters can pay annual bonuses that exceed the lifetime earnings of most Americans.

Every aspect of the US military has been mined for private profit. Supply and other functions for the military, such as those provided by Halliburton and Blackwater, services once provided by the military itself at low cost, have been privatized. These services now cost many multiples of the cost to taxpayers of in-house military provision.

The “war on terror” enriches the armaments/security industry and enables Israeli territorial expansion. The Israel Lobby and the munitions industry are major sources of funding for U.S. political campaigns.

Prisons have been privatized in order to create profits for private corporations. The prisons require high incarceration rates in order to be profitable. Consequently, “freedom and democracy” America not only has the highest incarceration rate and the highest absolute number of prisoners in the world, but also a prison population comparable in size to the prison population of Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago.

Congress allows private companies run by hardline Republicans to count electronically without paper trails the votes in elections. It has been proved over and over that the electronic voting machines, with proprietary undisclosed codes, can rig any election, especially if there are no exit polls or the captured media can find a way to discredit the exit polls.


Wall Street is concerned with annual bonuses. It will do anything to get them.

Let me repeat that important notion, "IT WILL DO ANYTHING TO GET THEM."

Roberts mentions reports of people with treatable forms of cancer not being told by their corporate health care providers in order for the providers to avoid the cost of their treatments. Profits over everything, even human lives. The granny and non-granny killing apparently is going on now by the sociopathic, bottom-line driven mega-corporations, and is not just a projected twinkle in the eyes of us socialist liberal reformers. Roberts writes, “These reports are in compliance with capitalist America's emphasis on profits uber alles, to hell with people, the environment, honor and integrity."

“Free market” Wall Street (someone said on the radio last week we should say “concentrated market” NOT “free market”), Roberts says, is romanticized by libertarians and, of course, those many free market economists. A nice cronyism pass is too often given to those generous, campaign donating guys just honoring their bottom lines, doing their "free market" thing. After all. Isn't that what makes America great? What's a little homicide here and there, as long as it doesn't involve facing down your victim, or ever having to face accountability. The safe corporate remoteness from the victims. Group sociopathology. Group-think denial. The rich must be right. They are smart enough to be rich, aren't they? Money power not morality seems to assert and rule. Escapes accountability.

I quoted Clare Booth Luce recently. "No good deed goes unpunished." We progressive messengers need to hang tough and keep up the messaging despite the near-traumatizing, or at the very least crazymaking, levels of disinterest, denial, patronization and castigation in response to our efforts.

Remember at the end of the movie All The President's Men when Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee gives Redford's Woodward and Hoffman's Bernstein 15 minutes to go home, have a shower, and then get back to work? He then reminds them that it's not like anything really important is riding on their efforts -- only the future of the free world! 

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Heard an interview with Hedges yesterday, where he went over some of the points that you have excerpted:
Excellent summary of the disastrous state of the US political scene. In my view, the people running the US government, including Obama, are professional criminals, i.e, they regularly do stuff that isn't just immoral and unethical - it's downright illegal. Sometimes they cleverly disguise this fact. However I see good evidence that the majority of Americans are coming to recognize this fact.
An excellent summary of the totally destructive monstrous mess the USA and the world is captive to. I doubt it will be understood by the several contributors at this site hypnotized by the pure baloney manufactured by the current regime intent on re-election. But there is a growing mass of people losing jobs, homes, health and education aside from the constitutional guarantees being trashed by the president. Whether they can confront and reverse the frightful power of the money elite before this torrent of vandalism destroys all possibility of decent living is highly debatable. I am not optimistic.
This is such horrifying and a pessimistic future. Excellent piece, but the reality it exposes is very, very sad and tipping the point of no return.

I will never forget the time when Oprah Winfrey, accused of being to "White", said words to the effect that she looked in the mirror every morning and saw herself.

Then she asked "How Black do I have to be?"

Our President is not suicidal.

Good job of telling the awful truth, but when is America going to pull a Spike Lee and WAAAAKE UUUUP?
An honest assessment of our status quo, and definitely what Dr. Bramhall and Jan Sand said. Thank you. R
thanks for comments and ratings! i was startled but gratified to note that this one, from two years ago originally, actually made the top-rated list for a bit. (thought I might be on some cyber special sh*t list re that list, not to mention the EP one. :) ) That especially gave me hope for there being citizens of Salon who do NOT subscribe to what can only be labeled the "obamabot" call to Dem myopic cronyism, "do whatever Obama wants", indeed! That title alone I found profoundly worrisome ... and titillatingly baiting.

Sean, thanks for the Hedges link. I got to hear him speak a bit at an OWS rally against Citizens United (its 2 year anniversary) in the frigid cold last Friday down on Centre St. near the courthouses. I was down there for Grand Jury Duty and lucked out literally bumping into the rally.

Stuart, yes, I think there is a momentum to reality, courage and commitment by more and more of us. Watching Obama play Lucy and the football one more time with the "minimizing Dem pragmatics" is of course painful -- incredible. The depths that our "official" criminals have sunk stupefies. The media will never acknowledge the sane backlash of citizens to the evil, but that doesn't mean it is not out there and it is growing. Breaking the media thrall, "occupy media", especially the nuanced, cherry-picking and corporate MSNBC is a significant challenge!

Jan, what you said and so powerfully and eloquently. A "torrent of vandalism" destroying all. We are a captured country economically and in terms of the ever-growing police state, physically, but more and more of us are coming to fight back at least spiritually, i.e., not being trapped in the bubble of illusion, enabling evil. It really does come down to good vs. evil.

Fusun, thank you for the rating and comment!

Zumalicious, thanks but I am confused re "suicidal" remark re Obama. Please expand. Didn't ol' Spike Lee just sponsor Obama's recent $35,000 per guest fund raiser in NYC? Oprah and Spike don't seem to get and/or care what Obama has done to all of us average Americans, but re the social programs supporting struggling Black Americans now devastated by Obama's administration ("austerity" bullshit) and a callous and corporate-controlled Congress there seems a particular heartlessness and betrayal. If Obama wins in November he will be useful to the USWarMachine imperialism about to further horrifyingly plunder Africa. The "trust me" stance he will take internationally will buy the corporate pirates (and their not our military) more opportunities and time to further devastate lives as the oligarchs sociopathically did in this country to us post Bush. As we naively waited for Obama to do the right thing post Bush. He never did.

Thoth, as always, thanks for your validation and support.

Finally, here is a quote from Glen Ford of BAR, part of his reaction to the SOTU re the economy. Ford calls Obama out as he has since the beginning:


“We’ve put in place new rules to hold Wall Street accountable, so a crisis like that never happens again,” said the president. Nonsense. Obama fought tooth and nail to defend the fatal derivatives market from serious tampering by progressive Democrats. The crisis of 2008 was set off by the multiplier effect of derivatives on the collapse of toxic mortgage securities. At the time, at least $600 trillion dollars in derivatives loomed over the planet. Today, derivatives have rebounded to…over $600 trillion. The banks that were “too big to fail” are even bigger, and there are fewer of them – meaning, capital is more concentrated than before. Obama’s “new rules” have preserved and further consolidated the hegemony of finance capital over U.S. economic and political life. The world economy teeters on the brink."

"But, “America is back!” says the president. It is the “indispensable nation” – the one that treats the rest of the planet, and most of its own citizens, as entirely dispensable. Hail to the Chief!"

If the liberals of this country would finally come to grips with reality…with what can and cannot be done in the current toxic political environment…maybe they could at least stem the downward spiral the liberal brand has managed to engender.

Conservative candidates continue to battle among themselves about who is the most conservative; who has been the true conservative for the longest time; and who will govern from the most conservative perspective—they proudly proclaim their conservatism. Liberal candidates don’t even mention the word—they shrink from it because it has become the kiss of death in our society!

Voters who call themselves staunch conservatives do anything and everything in their power to enable conservatives and ridicule liberals; their intent is to defeat liberals and liberalism.

Voters who call themselves staunch liberals do anything and everything in their power to find fault with anyone who is not insane…who is not willing to alienate him/herself from the vast majority of the American public and pursue policies that are inherently unattainable at this time. Voters who call themselves staunch liberals piss on opportunities to further progressive initiatives incrementally and pragmatically…and seem intent on helping their most vocal political enemies.

Liberals live in a world of fantasy…and do as much to tarnish the liberal/progressive brand as the most ideological conservatives.

I will happily vote for Barack Obama’s re-election…and live with what I see as the inevitable consequences of the shortsightedness of the liberal base. I suspect we will all find out if the brilliant liberal plan of abandoning Obama will lead to a better, fairer, more decent climate for America when this dazzling strategy results in someone of Newt Gingrich’s ilk gaining the Oval Office.
obama's ilk? NDAA indefinite detention of citizens, assassinations of citizens, ramped up beyond Bush years USWarMachine, droning innocent people in nations we have no business attacking, jobs council made up of corporate execs taking advantage of joblessness for their own opportunism, immunity for all banksters, enabling additional economic raping in America, enhancing global warming and destroying water supplies, CORRUPTION, CORRUPTION, CORRUPTION, LIES, LIES, LIES. Basic difference between Bush and Obama regimes? Opposition. We could have found a liberal, social justice candidate save for the paralyzing loyalists to a President who is the energizer bunny of betrayal but the corporate media hypnotizes and the advertising branding spins away and the obamabots do their lemming march to fascism. The "Good German" Americans, faux progressives who never focus on the sins of Obama, denying them, but attack the Republicans and those calling out Obama. Kabuki, big time wrestling political gamesmanship. We need a paradigm shift. Too bad so many don't get it, and simply go after the messengers calling out Democrat money party evil and Dem president evil. It is downright evil from both parties. Congress and the President sold out to the oligarchs. Exploiting Gabby Gifford isn't going to redeem them though it buys more media spin.
It's a shame that so many people confuse alleged political reality with actual reality. These people believe that if you cannot pass laws to save the environment, for example, then the environment simply is not needed or that standing for the environment therefore becomes optional. That's sheer insanity. These people endanger everyone.

I know what Zuma means by suicidal. We have before and would again shoot anyone who chooses the path of responsibility. However, there is no doubt we are guaranteed an even worse fate awaits us on our current path of irresponsibility. There is no choice but to stand with reality no matter how unpopular it is with the political kool-aid drinkers - on both the left and the right.
Libby, I didn’t really consider the speech to be a State of the Union speech at all. I think it was a campaign speech…the first legitimate volley by Obama in the new election.

We really didn’t have to hear about the “state of the nation.” We all know it is not anywhere near in as good a shape as any of us (liberal, conservative, centrist) want it to be. We have widely different ideas about whether or not it is better than it was when Obama took office; worse than it was; or essentially the same—and we have even more polar ideas about what steps are needed to help improve it. But in a sense, the nation is united in feeling things suck.

So, as I personally hoped he would do, I think Obama made the occasion a platform for talking about WHAT HE WOULD LIKE TO SEE DONE to impact positively on the problems at hand. At no point do I even suspect he will get all, or even most, of these things done; I doubt that he could even if he struggled valiantly to achieve them, something I think he is intelligent and pragmatic enough not to do. He talked about what his side of the political spectrum DESIRES in the way of focus…and how it differs from what the other side SEEMS TO DESIRE. (I am not saying that “his side” is necessarily the “liberal” side. I have come to question the wisdom and common sense of the “liberal” side…and I suspect he has also.)

I saw a huge difference between what he says he desires and what people like Gingrich, Romney, and Paul say they desire. Frankly, I think all parties are avoiding the elephant in the room, but if I were a politician running for office, I doubt truth about our problems would be priority with me either.

I understand your frustration, Libby, but helping defeat Obama and getting a Republican elected as a replacement just does not make sense. And any thoughts that there are choices other than those two…makes even less sense.
Thanks, Harry, for commenting and reality check wisdom.

Frank, Obama took what could have been the opportunity to turn things around after Bush and instead not only obstructed a progressive recovery but intensified our capture by the oligarchs. Helped legalized bit by bit the evil shadowy stuff that Bush and Cheney had perpetrated. Obama is continuing in the shredding of the constitution. HIS decision for example to lock up indefinitely citizens without due process. Why why why Frank is this not an issue for you and the Obama supporters on this website? How can you all reconcile this horror? Due process for God's sakes! The nightmare of corporate wars. Do you really think it has to do with terrorism??? Why among the so called rebels the US staked to overthrow Libya were actually members of Al Qaeda! But though this made it into a few stories, no BIGGIE, to the corporate media that knows which side its bread is buttered on. Obama has not penalized anyone for the economic rape of the 99 percent of this country and the international economic raping. Fraud, instead, has been legalized. The Dodd-Frank bill is a super joke with 2300+ pages of loopholes. Small banks are punished because of the too big to fail banks, you know, the ones staking Obama in the 2012 election. So why THIS time would Obama do the right thing? All you have to say back is Romney and Gingrich are worse? You know I am not endorsing them. There should be a stampede to the Green Party, but that is too anti-status quo, and those whose egos and hearts are unbelievably invested in the regime of Obama are dooming the US. We liberals are not dooming America, Frank. You are. You are contributing to the deadweight of the problem, not living in the solution. libby
We're gonna find out, Libby. You...and others like you are contributing to getting a Republican like Gingrich into power.

We'll see how that impacts on the things you think are important.
Frank, the people of conscience can't assert their values and their principles and their passions directly against the Republicans because they are blocked and stifled and harassed by Dems, people posturing to be progressives themselves who are bottlenecking progress, who have become numb and paralyzed and manipulated by media and Obama and the shameless Congresspeople and their own fear of change and addiction to non-change and a tribalism cronyism groupthink. These people have helped enormously the media and the Obama money party disenfranchise and marginalize the people of conscience. And the ferocious deniers pro-Obama will watch as the people of conscience, especially if the numbers of the deniers pro-Obama even grows as Obama does his election razzle dazzle, are interned, maybe even tortured or assassinated, for their principles as their sibling citizens lets them twist in the wind and/or die. As for the future generations, letting the future generations have to worry about principles and right and not settling for lesser evilism, is their most vile sin. If there is a future for the planet and humanity. Whichever legacy party wins the election, it will be destructive to humanity and the planet. But the 1 percent will live large out the rest of their generation, and they are too psychopathic to care even about the future of their children and the children of others, naturally. As for the 99 percenters who clung to denial and let the nation slip to fascism, they are akin to the "Good Germans" during the Holocaust! libby
Libby, thanks for that response. I hear and feel the passion. I agree with many of the elements of your arguments, I just disagree with how you propose “to change” things. All I am asking is that good-intentioned people like you consider your “solutions” from the perspective of possible consequences—and to at least consider other avenues of “solutions.”

For instance, you wrote:


You seem to think that folk such as myself are “bottlenecking progress”….and that we are doing so as a result of having “become numb, paralyzed, and manipulated by media, Obama, and shameless congresspeople.

I assert that any real change from the path we are on (the general tendency of the population to move further and further to the right) will only be stemmed by incremental, pragmatic, at times glacial paced tweaking of the system. I assert that damn near all attempts to do it the way some of you good folk demand, will have counterproductive results.

Obama could not do many of the things you wanted done, because making seismic change is the thing ordinary Americans fear most about liberal politicians. Whether that makes sense or not is not the issue…whether it is so or not (AND IT IS SO) is what must concern us.

If Obama had insisted that a radical liberal agenda be pursued rather than what he did, he would have gotten less done than the meager amount you are now complaining about. That complaining, you remember, started when he managed to get a health plan passed…with people like you complaining bitterly that he did not go far enough.

Why didn’t you people applaud that he managed to get anything done in that area…and offer encouragement and support rather than demanding that he go to a higher floor before jumping?

This is already too long, so I will stop here, but Libby…advocating a policy that will result in Obama being defeated (which means victory for one of those Republicans debating last night), in my opinion, is lemming-like.
I would like to mention on other thing, Libby.

You used the term “people of conscience” a few times here.

To my ear, that expression sounds a lot like the expression “real Americans” when used by people like Sarah Palin and other conservatives.

They seem to be (they ARE) suggesting that only people who think as they do are “real Americans.” They people who disagree with them, in their opinions, are fake Americans or fraud Americans or not-real Americans.

That is inappropriately presumptuous on their part. I am as much a “real American” as any of them…you are also…and so are all the others who disagree with them.

Libby, it is every bit as inappropriately presumptuous of you to suggest that those of us who do not agree with you…who would take a different road to furthering a progressive agenda (one we consider less self-defeating than your path)…are somehow NOT PEOPLE OF CONSCIENCE! The contrasts you attempted to make between your take on things versus our take on things is not a question of being “people of conscience” or being “real Americans”…and ought not to be portrayed that way.

I AM a person of conscience--in fact, very much so.