Fuck Obama

[2012 Countdown]

John Conyers says 'FUCK OBAMA' (well, almost. Lets say 'figuratively')...

“We’ve Had It.” Lays Out Obama, Calls for Protest at White House


"We've got to educate the American people at the same time we educate the President of the United States. The Republicans, Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor did not call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal. The President of the United States called for that," Conyers, who has served in the House since 1965, said. "My response to him is to mass thousands of people in front of the White House to protest this," Conyers said strongly.




At a press conference held by members of the House Out of Poverty Caucus Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich), the second most senior member of the U.S. House, was pointed in his criticism of the White House regarding jobs and cuts to Social Security the President put on the table last week.

“We’ve got to educate the American people at the same time we educate the President of the United States. The Republicans, Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor did not call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal. The President of the United States called for that,” Conyers, who has served in the House since 1965, said. “My response to him is to mass thousands of people in front of the White House to protest this,” Conyers said strongly.

Though the debt ceiling debate continues, many Democrats continue to say the real issue is jobs and unemployment. Yesterday, the PEW Research Center put out a study showing the wealth gap between whites, blacks and Hispanics is wider than at any time in history. Conyers focused on jobs and the White House throughout much of what he said.

“We want full employment as a matter of government policy. Which was passed in 1987 when I stood with Hubert Humphrey. We passed the first bill that allowed the government — in areas of high unemployment — to directly intervene and create jobs. Well, we’ve got the bill in here again and I’ve got nothing from the White House,” Conyers told the audience. Several CBC members have called for targeted help for high unemployment in the black community.

The black unemployment rate is 16.2% and the unemployment rate among black males is 17%. Last week NAACP President Ben Jealous and National Urban League President Marc Morial met with President Obama at the White House for thirty minutes. No new initiatives targeting high black unemployment came out of that meeting.

The press conference featured the heads of several organizations that focus on public policy and poverty. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Dennis Kucininch (D-Ohio), Jerold Nadler (D-NY), Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif) and Raul Grajalva (D-NM) also spoke at the press conference.

“I was the first member of Congress to come out for the 44th President. We’ve got to march on him. He’ll be before the Congressional Black Caucus on September 21st.” Conyers said referring to the annual CBC Gala. The President has addressed the gala each year he’s been in office.

Focusing on Obama, Conyers continued. “We want him to know from this day forward that we’ve had it. We want him to come out on our side not to watch and wait… We’re suffering,” Conyers said. Several members of the CBC, including, Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), and are beginning to speak out more publicly on jobs and the White House policy. Many have called for a targeted approach to the problem.

Conyers then spoke on depression level unemployment in his Detroit district where the struggles of the auto industry has caused some of the highest unemployment rates in the nation.

“What Obama hasn’t said to us is “make me do it” but we have to make him do it… This is one of the most important issues we’re faced with,” Conyers said.
---
http://www.crewof42.com/cbc/conyers-on- ... ite-house/

[Bruce Dazzling]

If the Republic Had Not Died A Long Time Ago, This Would Indeed Be the Death of the Republic (Reprise)
Written by Chris Floyd
Sunday, 31 July 2011

Looking at the "deal" being formed to solve the "debt ceiling crisis," I thought it was appropriate to break out the old headline I used a few years ago. The current reference, of course, is to the extraordinary "special committee" or "Super Congress" which the deal intends to establish. This is an unaccountable politburo which will be able to circumvent all normal democratic (and republican) principles and issue budget-slashing, tax-cutting legislation that cannot be debated or amended, but simply approved or rejected by the rest of the now-powerless representatives and senators.

That's not all. If the politburo -- handpicked members split evenly between the two gangs of thieves and poltroons that now hold sway on Capitol Hill -- can't agree on just how much they want to gut the budget and cut taxes for the rich, why then, this will trip a series of "triggers" which will automatically start gutting, slashing and cutting, without any vote by the democratically elected representatives whatsoever. And surely it would be superfluous in me to point out that these unaccountable "superpowers" will soon stretch to cover other areas of legislation beyond budgeting and taxes.

Behind all the flim-flammery of this manufactured "crisis", we are watching the creation of a new form of government -- or rather, the further mutation of the new form of government that the United States has been crawling toward for a long time. We called it a "neo-feudal oligarchy backed by a militarist police state" here the other day. No doubt there are many other ways you could describe this murderous, ravenous, lopsided monstrosity of a system. But the one thing you cannot call it is a "republic".

As I wrote in my original piece, back in February 2008:

I don't know what will come next. I don't know if the United States can crawl out of the filthy pit of empire and tyranny over the next few decades and claw its way toward some new manifestation of democracy -- or if it will just keep sinking, raging, rotting, mutating further into a war-and-torture state that must feed constantly on human flesh to survive. Of course, I hope for -- and will work toward -- the former, the new manifestation, although I honestly don't expect to see such a thing in my own lifetime. But whatever will be, one thing is certain now: the constitutional republic of the United States is a dead letter, a relic of history.

And nothing that happens in November -- when one imperial factotum or another gets their turn at the top of the greasy pole -- will change that basic fact. The Freedom Road is a long road -- and we're still a long way from taking even our first steps on that journey. We've got miles of wilderness to cut through yet.

As you can see, I was still an incurable optimist in those halcyon days. We are not, of course, merely a "long way" from taking our first steps on the journey out of our madness; we are whole parsecs away, and hurtling at light-speed in the opposite direction.

And...

Fatal Vision: Last Bad Deal Gone Down
Written by Chris Floyd
Monday, 01 August 2011

So the deed is done. The "debt ceiling" crisis has been "resolved" by a further maniacal destruction of the commonweal, in a bipartisan pact that completely ignores the murderous imperial wars as the primary drain on the nation's treasury. As we noted here yesterday, the deal also sets up an unaccountable politburo (the special "Super Congress" committee) that will remove further coddling of the rich from the democratic process altogther.

However, I do feel I must defend our president from the charges of "weakness" and "cowardice" and "capitulation" that are pouring in on his noble head from all sides. Many learned Thebans are advancing the idea that Barack Obama has somehow "capitulated" to "extremists" who "forced" him into this "terrible deal."

The truth of course is that the Republican "extremists" served the same function for Obama as the "fatal vision" of the daggers did for Macbeth: "Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going." Obama came into office declaring his intent to strike a "grand bargain" on the deficit, eagerly putting Medicare, Social Security and other programs on the table for "reforms." He made clear from the start that his first and foremost allegiance was to the elite institutions of the financial markets (and the militarist oligarchy they feed); hence the $13 trillion offered up to Wall Street as compared to the transparently inadequate £700 billion offered as "stimulus" to the rest of the country -- money that was like tossing a few grains of sand into an ocean of economic need ... and which is now gone anyway.

Obama had many options for avoiding this "crisis," long before it came to a head. He didn't take those options because, like all good disaster capitalists, he wanted and needed a crisis of this sort to enact the brutal economic agenda he has openly advocated from the beginning. The result, of course, will be further impoverishment and diminishment in the lives of millions of ordinary people, for years to come -- and, ironically, the eventual collapse of the monstrous system that supports the ravenous elite that Obama serves with such panache.

History affords few examples of the political elite of a country commiting such an act of national suicide in order to protect the already super-rich from the slightest impingement of their already colossal fortunes.

I suppose Easter Island might serve as a pertinent precursor.

[Bruce Dazzling]

Here's Greenwald's take.

The money paragraph:

In other words, a slew of millionaire politicians who spent the last decade exploding the national debt with Endless War, a sprawling Surveillance State, and tax cuts for the rich are now imposing extreme suffering on the already-suffering ordinary citizenry, all at the direction of their plutocratic overlords, who are prospering more than ever and will sacrifice virtually nothing under this deal (despite their responsibility for the 2008 financial collapse that continues to spawn economic misery). And all of this will be justified by these politicians and their millionaire media mouthpieces with the obscenely deceitful slogans of "shared sacrifice" and "balanced debt reduction" -- two of the most odiously Orwellian phrases since "Look Forward, not Backward" and "2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate."

The entire piece:

Democratic politics in a nutshell
Sunday, Jul 31, 2011 10:32 ET

Let's begin by taking note of three facts:

(1) Three days ago, Democratic Rep. John Conyers, appearing at a meeting of the Out of Poverty caucus, said: "The Republicans -- Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor -- did not call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal. The President of the United States called for that" (video here, at 1:30);

(2) The reported deal on the debt ceiling is so completely one-sided -- brutal domestic cuts with no tax increases on the rich and the likelihood of serious entitlement cuts in six months with a "Super Congressional" deficit commission -- that even Howard Kurtz was able to observe: "If there are $3 trillion in cuts and no tax hikes, Obama will have to explain how it is that the Republicans got 98 pct. of what they wanted," while Grover Norquist, the Right of the Right on such matters, happily proclaimed: "Sounds like a budget deal with real savings and no tax hikes is a go."

(3) The same White House behavior shaping the debt deal -- full embrace of GOP policies and (in the case of Social Security cuts) going beyond that -- has been evident in most policy realms from the start. It first manifested in the context of Obama's adoption of the Bush/Cheney approach to the war on civil liberties and Terrorism, which is why civil libertarians were the first to object so vocally and continuously to the Obama presidency, culminating in this amazing event from mid-2010: "Speaking at a conference of liberal activists Wednesday morning, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero didn't mince his words about the administration's handling of civil liberties issues. 'I'm going to start provocatively . . . I'm disgusted with this president,' Romero told the America's Future Now breakout session."

In other words, a slew of millionaire politicians who spent the last decade exploding the national debt with Endless War, a sprawling Surveillance State, and tax cuts for the rich are now imposing extreme suffering on the already-suffering ordinary citizenry, all at the direction of their plutocratic overlords, who are prospering more than ever and will sacrifice virtually nothing under this deal (despite their responsibility for the 2008 financial collapse that continues to spawn economic misery). And all of this will be justified by these politicians and their millionaire media mouthpieces with the obscenely deceitful slogans of "shared sacrifice" and "balanced debt reduction" -- two of the most odiously Orwellian phrases since "Look Forward, not Backward" and "2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate" (and anyone claiming that Obama was involuntarily forced by the "crazy" Tea Party into massive budget cuts at a time of almost 10% unemployment: see the actual facts here).

With those facts assembled, this morning's New York Times article -- headlined: "Rightward Tilt Leaves Obama With Party Rift" -- supplies the perfect primer for understanding Democratic Party politics. The article explains that "Mr. Obama, seeking to appeal to the broad swath of independent voters, has adopted the Republicans' language and in some cases their policies," and then lists numerous examples just from the debt debate alone (never mind all the other areas where he's done the same):

No matter how the immediate issue is resolved, Mr. Obama, in his failed effort for greater deficit reduction, has put on the table far more in reductions for future years' spending, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, than he did in new revenue from the wealthy and corporations. He proposed fewer cuts in military spending and more in health care than a bipartisan Senate group that includes one of the chamber's most conservative Republicans. . . .

But by this month, in ultimately unsuccessful talks with Speaker John A. Boehner, Mr. Obama tentatively agreed to a plan that was farther to the right than that of the majority of the fiscal commission and a bipartisan group of senators, the so-called Gang of Six. It also included a slow rise in the Medicare eligibility age to 67 from 65, and, after 2015, a change in the formula for Social Security cost-of-living adjustments long sought by economists.

How can the leader of the Democratic Party wage an all-out war on the ostensible core beliefs of the Party's voters in this manner and expect not just to survive, but thrive politically? Democratic Party functionaries are not shy about saying exactly what they're thinking in this regard:

Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster, said polling data showed that at this point in his term, Mr. Obama, compared with past Democratic presidents, was doing as well or better with Democratic voters. "Whatever qualms or questions they may have about this policy or that policy, at the end of the day the one thing they're absolutely certain of -- they're going to hate these Republican candidates," Mr. Mellman said. "So I'm not honestly all that worried about a solid or enthusiastic base.”

In other words: it makes no difference to us how much we stomp on liberals' beliefs or how much they squawk, because we'll just wave around enough pictures of Michele Bachmann and scare them into unconditional submission. That's the Democratic Party's core calculation: from "hope" in 2008 to a rank fear-mongering campaign in 2012. Will it work? The ones who will determine if it will are the intended victims of that tactic: angry, impotent liberals whom the White House expects will snap dutifully into line no matter what else happens (even, as seems likely, massive Social Security and Medicare cuts) between now and next November.

[Peachtree Pam]

More Greenwald with many links within the article:
Monday, Aug 1, 2011 10:02 ET

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn ... index.html

The myth of Obama's "blunders" and "weakness"
By Glenn Greenwald

With the details of the pending debt deal now emerging (and for a very good explanation of the key terms, see this post by former Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein), a consensus is solidifying that (1) this is a virtually full-scale victory for the GOP and defeat for the President (who all along insisted on a "balanced" approach that included tax increases), but (2) the President, as usual, was too weak in standing up to right-wing intransigence -- or simply had no options given their willingness to allow default -- and was thus forced into this deal against his will. This depiction of Obama as occupying a largely powerless, toothless office incapable of standing up to Congress -- or, at best, that the bad outcome happened because he's just a weak negotiator who "blundered" -- is the one that is invariably trotted out to explain away most of the bad things he does.

It appears to be true that the President wanted tax revenues to be part of this deal. But it is absolutely false that he did not want these brutal budget cuts and was simply forced -- either by his own strategic "blunders" or the "weakness" of his office -- into accepting them. The evidence is overwhelming that Obama has long wanted exactly what he got: these severe domestic budget cuts and even ones well beyond these, including Social Security and Medicare, which he is likely to get with the Super-Committee created by this bill (as Robert Reich described the bill: "No tax increases on rich yet almost certain cuts in Med[icare] and Social Security . . . . Ds can no longer campaign on R's desire to Medicare and Soc Security, now that O has agreed it").

Last night, John Cole -- along with several others -- promoted this weak-helpless-President narrative by asking what Obama could possibly have done to secure a better outcome. Early this morning, I answered him by email, but as I see that this is the claim being pervasively used to explain Obama's acceptance of this deal -- he was forced into it by the Tea Party hostage-takers -- I'm reprinting that email I wrote here. For those who believe this narrative, please confront the evidence there; how anyone can claim in the face of all that evidence that the President was "forced" into making these cuts -- as opposed to having eagerly sought them -- is mystifying indeed. And, as I set forth there, there were ample steps he could have taken had he actually wanted leverage against the GOP; the very idea that negotiating steps so obvious to every progressive pundit somehow eluded the President and his vast army of advisers is absurd on its face.

Here's The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn -- who, as he says, with some understatement, is usually "among [Obama's] staunchest defenders in situations like these" -- on what these guaranteed cuts mean (never mind the future cuts likely to come from the Super Committee):

As Robert Greenstein, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, pointed out in a recent statement about a different proposal, there’s just no way to enact spending reductions of this magnitude without imposing a lot of pain. And contrary to the common understanding in the Washington cocktail party circuit, “pain” does not simply mean offending certain political sensibilities. Pain means more people eating tainted food, more people breathing polluted air, more people pulling their kids out of college, and more people losing their homes -- in other words, the hardships people suffer when government can't do an adequate job of looking out for their interests.

As I wrote back in April when progressive pundits in D.C. were so deeply baffled by Obama's supposed "tactical mistake" in not insisting on a clean debt ceiling increase, Obama's so-called "bad negotiating" or "weakness" is actually "shrewd negotiation" because he's getting what he actually wants (which, shockingly, is not always the same as what he publicly says he wants). In this case, what he wants -- and has long wanted, as he's said repeatedly in public -- are drastic spending cuts. In other words, he's willing -- eager -- to impose the "pain" Cohn describes on those who can least afford to bear it so that he can run for re-election as a compromise-brokering, trans-partisan deficit cutter willing to "take considerable heat from his own party."

[Elihu]

we are watching the creation of a new form of government -- or rather, the further mutation of the new form of government that the United States has been crawling toward for a long time.

new and yet very old at the same time. I don't think The Constitution failed us. I think we...

"... To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition." Thomas Jefferson

"I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. -- From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy." Daniel Webster

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching. It unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country ... the Money Power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
– Abraham Lincoln

"The average man doesn't want to be free; he wants to be safe." - H.L. Mencken

"The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
-Sen. Barack Obama, Dec 20, 2007

"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."
-H.L. Mencken

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." -- Samuel Adams

"The liberties of people never were, and never will be secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." Patrick Henry

and so on. i don't know why we act so surprised or shocked...

[Elihu]

afterthoughts: john conyers, oh man... should have put that sam adams quote in the saloon thread...

[brainpanhandler]

and so on. i don't know why we act so surprised or shocked...

I think good people are always surprised by evil. It's one of the many advantages evil has.

[Elihu]

I think good people are always surprised by evil. It's one of the many advantages evil has.

i see your point. i sabotaged my sentiment with that callous comment. apologies. so trying to get back on focus:

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” Henry D. Thoreau

[justdrew]

TAX protest time? time for everyone to change their withholding to "specific amount: $0.00"

[brainpanhandler]

I think good people are always surprised by evil. It's one of the many advantages evil has.

i see your point. i sabotaged my sentiment with that callous comment. apologies. so trying to get back on focus:

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” Henry D. Thoreau

Not callous. I don't think good people should be surprised by evil at this point. Being good and ignorant is better than being malign and ignorant, but maybe not by a whole lot in a practical sense.

Nonetheless I am still often surprised by the sheer cruelty, greed and depravity of the ownership class. I shouldn't be, but I am.

[Elihu]

TAX protest time? time for everyone to change their withholding to "specific amount: $0.00"

certainly has the "american revolutionary spirit" about it doesn't it? once the die are cast there will be no going back. the citizens involuntarily paying taxes by having them withheld at the source aren't the ones that have broken the social compact imo. ie, the connection between the amount of debt contracted by the central government to be repaid by taxes has been severed. perpetual debt and or other types of slavery implied. and so far as i know, since it is sill impossible to change stones into bread a breakdown or transition to some other type of compact is inevitable. choices still exist but none pleasant.

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice
in a contemptible struggle."
-Edmund Burke

[Brentos]

Michael Hudson, IMO nails the charade behind the debt-ceiling 'crisis'.

http://michael-hudson.com/2011/07/debt- ... repealing/

Anyone who thinks there was any doubt in raising the debt ceiling, must think those ass-clowns on the floor actually run the show. The crisis was used to screw people.

I didnt even follow the charade, seen it before, so knew what was going to happen. No new taxes on the wealthy/corporations, that can got kicked down the road until post-election. Then it will be another farce pushing cuts on security nets for the poorer, under the auspice of pretending to cut for everyone. Democratic Leadership Council was put in place to make the Democratic party captive to Wall Street under Clinton, replicated in the UK with Blair.

The troop withdrawals are political as well.

[barracuda]

Anyone who thinks there was any doubt in raising the debt ceiling, must think those ass-clowns on the floor actually run the show.

Those guys on the floor actually do run the show. On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, that is.

[Brentos]

Anyone who thinks there was any doubt in raising the debt ceiling, must think those ass-clowns on the floor actually run the show.

Those guys on the floor actually do run the show. On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, that is.

lol, exactly.

I switched on the 11 oclock news and watched obama give his sell to the american people. Then read the washington post to get the divvy on it. Depressing. More depressing are the pundits like the post writer and the commentators defending the cuts. Obama may be captivated like most of the americans and think this is all good. He is celebrated, arrogant, intelligent and highly educated, so that makes him the dumbest (in terms of thinking he is making the best decisions for america) in certain situations.

[Simulist]

Anyone who thinks there was any doubt in raising the debt ceiling, must think those ass-clowns on the floor actually run the show. The crisis was used to screw people.

That's exactly right. The appearance of "democracy" in the United States is merely a sideshow to keep the herd from stampeding.