Obama Fails at Hold 'Em Poker

Republicans (and some yahoos calling themselves Democrat) are hellbent on destroying our social safety net despite the contrary wishes of the vast majority of American people.  Yesterday, we witnessed a weird convergence of these two indisputable facts as the Republican controlled congress voted to repeal health care reform and CBS Sixty-Minutes and Vanity Fair released a poll indicating that a combined 81% of Americans would either raise taxes on the wealthy (61%) or cut military spending (20%) in order to bring into line the nation's fiscal problems.  A scant handful, almost no more than the margin for error percentage, would cut Social Security or Medicare.

However, late last year President Obama went "all in" and tried to fill an inside straight by giving Republicans an extension of the Bush era tax cuts in order to gain a few palliative concessions including an extension of unemployment benefits for workers displaced by the current depression which was triggered by corporate greed and banking and Wall Street shenanigans.  Well, "the river" gave him no help at all!  Not only did the GOP get an extension of the Bush administration's tax policies, they are poised to rake in all the chips under the guise of Social Security reform.

All of which is to say, even Obama is ignoring the will of the people and gambling away our future.

Obama will want to stay in the game, and in order to do so, he will have to hustle up the means to stay at the table.  If past is prelude to present, we can expect him to capitulate on "entitlement" reform as he did on health care reform, Wall Street and banking regulation, and tax cuts for the wealthy.  In short, he is going to pawn our social safety net in order to stay at the table.

Even before "the flop" of the next hand, we can expect him to ante up raising the retirement age (which hammers working women and physical labor intensive workers the hardest), and reducing future benefits, and never mind that most of America is opposed, he has allowed himself to be sandbagged and an already poor hand is made awful by his lack of courage in standing up to the Republicans.

Already arrogant and out-of-control, the Republicans, financed by multi-national corporate money and pulled even further to the right by tea-bags and tea-hags will check and call, or raise and call him by saddling him with "entitlement reform".  Nowhere in this will you see anything approaching meaningful jobs creation measures..that card has been pulled from the deck.  You see, with an eye on 2012, the Republicans do not want the economy or jobs picture to improve and will check, call and bluff to that end.

You see, the president believes that by posturing to independents he can win reelection.  After all, democrats and progressives have nowhere else to turn, or so the thinking goes.  He's dismally wrong, is underplaying his hand, and will lose the pot...unfortunately, you and I will lose our shirts in the process.

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Letter To Obama: Stand down!

December 8, 2010

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C.20500

Dear Mr. President,

I regret to inform you that I find your naivete' appalling and frightening.

You often remark that, in effect, you're representing all the people of America.  In theory, at sort of a ninth grade civics class sort of way, you're correct.  But, in reality there are anywhere from 25 to 35 percent of the population who would gladly burn crosses on the White House lawn and drag you and your family out into the cold December night and hang you before setting fire to your corpses.  Do you truly believe that you represent them, or that by extending a hand you will change them?

This mindlessly, lunatic rabble is financed, encouraged, and abetted by nameless, faceless corporations that know no national boundaries nor any sense of patriotism toward our nation.  They are the vanguard of international fascism, and in no sense of the word do they believe that you "represent" them. They are the masters of destruction, they use our legislature to further their own aims, they use our military to advance their worldwide goals and to advance their profits--do you truly believe that you "represent" them?

I worked long and hard (as did millions of others) to help get you elected.  As a cancer survivor, I used strength and energy I could not spare. As a Social Security recipient, I contributed money that I could ill afford to part with. I did these things because I believed you when you promised to rein in and corral the liars, thieves, cut-purses and mendicants of Wall Street and banking.  I believed you when you said you would extract us from two unfunded wars of invasion and occupation of non-belligerent sovereign nations. I believed you when you said you would lead us in the fight to bring to heel the hell-hounds of the drug and insurance companies and provide all Americans with an opportunity for quality, affordable health care. And, I believed you when you said you would bring an end to the Bush tax-cuts, which further enrich the already wealthy while diminishing the middle-class and further impoverishing the already poor and destitute.

I believed you were a man of strength, courage and fortitude.  I believed you would provide leadership against some very dark and strong forces undermining every precept of representative democracy.  I believed that you would help us climb out of the abyss of cynicism and insane self-indulgence  wrought by the dry-drunk sociopath who preceded you in the White House.

I watch as your supporters rightfully desert you.I have watched as you have silently suffered insult and attack without response. And sadly, after two years of capitulation, compromise, and weakness, I see no way back for you.  You have exhausted my trust and belief.  You have failed to accomplish that which you were elected to do.  I am saddened and sickened by this.

I encourage you to take the first opportunity to come before the American people and announce that you will not seek a second term in order to allow the Democratic party to find a candidate worthy of the office.  Perhaps, without the distraction of re-election considerations or eye toward your place in history, you could find the time, stamina and will to truly represent those Americans who elected you!

Sincerely,

Shane Fox

Ask Obama: Why His Stranglehold on Mediocrity?

How did we go from an avalanche of support for Barack Obama's soaring and inspired rhetoric and promised progressive reform, which carried him into office and created the largest House and Senate majorities since the post-Nixon years, to this mega-monument of mediocrity now being erected by his administration and dysfunctional national Democrats?

Ask Obama!

Or better yet, ask Howard Zinn, who wrote in The Nation, last month; "I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president--which means, in our time, a dangerous president--unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction."

Since Mr. Obama was elected, we (progressives, liberals, Democrats, and informed independents) have witnessed the loss of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat to the GOP, breaking the filibuster proof margin the Democrats held in the Senate; the counter productive tax-cut laden stimulus bill, which was designed that way to induce Republican support, has cleverly been turned against the President by those same Republicans he sought to woo; the loss of Governorships in Virginia and New Jersey; an administration riddled with remnants of Bush's failed neo-liberal economists from the Friedman philosophy of deregulation and unrestrained capitalism; and what is an overly generous description (given the stench) of "business as usual" in Washington; and expansion of the war in Afghanistan, to name just a few of the more unsettling things about this administration after only one year in office.

Even one-term Jimmy Carter has protested any comparison of his administration to Mr. Obama's--"c'mon now, we weren't all that bad", he seems to say.

But for me, Mr. Obama's greatest failure is in what was to be his signature domestic victory: a meaningful comprehensive health care reform bill that would for once-and-all break the stranglehold of the giant insurance company Tsars and their partners in crime, the oligarchs of the international pharmaceutical conglomerates.

There will be lot of analysis of how Mr. Obama squandered this unique and historic opportunity to finally arrive at this particular dismal failure, but for me it is very simple. Mr. Obama was tepid and tentative in his early support of any real and meaningful change..single-payer (Medicare for All) was taken out of the planning. Even with that, there were floated several credible "Public Option" plans, which if implemented, would have provided the leverage to bring about the promised change, but this president voiced no support for such plans. Furthermore, when flagrantly dissed by the likes of Senators Baucus and Lieberman he failed to exercise the presidential option of taking to the "woodshed" these two simpering renegades and all but handed the process over to those very drug and insurance company villains who profit so greatly from our sicknesses, accidents and infirmities.

There was a memorable and historic effort by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, and House Whip Steny Hoyer to craft, over a year ago, a meaningful and comprehensive health care reform bill. This president, intent on who knows what, stood by in silence as Senators Baucus, Lieberman along with Minority Leader John Boehner waged the Republican war of disinformation, prevarication, lies and misinformation including claims of "death panels", "socialized medicine", "loss of Medicare benefits for seniors" at contrived and staged "Town Hall Meetings" during summer recess..

One hates to, but feels compelled to compare this president to his predecessor, that dry-drunk sociopath George W. Bush. Bush barely squeaked into office only with the help of a conservative packed Supreme Court and after losing to Gore in the popular vote, yet he governed as though he had a mandate and in so doing accomplished much of what he set out to do--to the detriment of this country and the world. Obama, with a clear majority of the popular and electoral vote, a majority House and Senate behaved, and behaves, as though any affront to the Republicans will reverse the results of the election.

Now the question remains, will progressives unite and make their voices heard and break this president's grasp on mediocrity and force him to dare to venture into excellence?

This president likes to compare himself to Lincoln who, during a hiatus in the Civil War, asked of his commanding general of the moment, "General if you're not going to use your army, I should like to". With that in mind, Mr. President if you're not going to use the presidency, there are those of us who would!

"Scum-Bag" Liberals Demand the Promised Change

When Mr. Obama was elected as President of the United States he included in his victory speech these words: "This victory alone is not the change we seek--it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen without you."

On these lofty words, he began his administration with the support and the goodwill of the majority of America and with as favorable a legislative balance as any Democrat has had in many, many years. We liberals (and progressives, as I really see no distinction) were hopeful and confident that change would come about. That a real jobs program would be created to offset the tragically high rate of unemployment, that small and medium sized businesses would find support rather than rhetoric, that we would ratchet down our military presence in the Muslim world, and that we would see true regulation and restraint placed on Wall Street, its bankers and financiers and that there would be meaningful home-ownership relief to forestall, prevent or even end the horrendous rate of foreclosure. Those were some of our liberal hopes.

But most of all we dreamed of health care reform that would insure that never again would any American die, remain sick or crippled, or left bankrupt and in poverty because of lack of access to quality, affordable health care. We thought that at last we had a President and Congress who would do those things.

Now our dismay has turned to outright anger as we saw all that squandered on the naive altar of bipartisan negotiation and cooperation as though goodwill would be sufficient to get the monied interests and their legislative lackeys to do the right thing. We're angry because it is still business as usual, we're angry because the Senate version of health care reform does not do a damned thing to effect real change and that the administration through its grassroots campaign organization, "Organizing for America" is touting that the Senate bill is the best we can get.

Now, that is fine. That is politics. But, when a major regional figure in O. F. A. has the effrontery and gall to characterize a sitting Democratic Congressman as a "scum-bag" because he will not go along with the administration's marching orders, I think that perhaps it is time for people to take a deep breath and ask themselves if the promised change has happened, is happening, or looks likely to happen. And if one's answer is no, where do we turn to bring about the change we so urgently need to restore and insure the survival of an American middle class.

At least that is what this particular "scum-bag" liberal, who adamantly opposes the Senate version of health care reform, is thinking