Category Archives: Barack Obama Lies
The Tea Party: America’s Khmer Rouge
Posted by ttuttle12
While I remain unconvinced that the ongoing Punch and Judy show over the raising of the national debt ceiling is nothing more but a gambit to destroy Social Security and Medicare, leading to their theft and redirection to the depraved gamblers on Wall Street there is one thing that is certain – the Republican party is a terrorist organization. I have long maintained this very simple truth about this deranged pack of anti-American fascist jackals and their relentless army of neo-confederates, Rapture zombies, teabagger freaks whose blistering hatred for traditional American values is every bit as advanced and savage as their 1930’s German historical counterparts once was. They are looking for the conditions where the system can be damaged to the point where the berserkers can be loosed, goaded on to engage in pogroms and the smorgasbord of scapegoats that are regularly served up by the likes of Rush Hudson Limbaugh III, Glenn Beck and thousands of even more vile although lesser paid instigators until the streets run red with blood. Providing that the debt ceiling “debate” isn’t anything more than another deceptively promoted by a corrupt media shearing of the sheep to keep the Wall Street predators ensconced in their mansions in the Hamptons and partying on their yachts and private jets this may be the time that the shit really does hit the fan.
The phony grass roots Tea Party, a post -Bush re-branding of the most rotten, ignorant and vicious elements of the Republican base conjure up comparisons with the Cambodian Khmer Rouge. So intent are these white skinned crybabies at “getting their country back” from the black man in the WHITE House that they clamor for the destruction of the entire country, as the infamous Vietnam saying goes “we had to destroy the village in order to save it”. While the actual effects of not raising the debt ceiling are unknown other than it would blow a hole in the ongoing Wall Street pillaging it would vastly affect the average American schmuck on a far greater level. Assuredly interest rates would rise which the finance industry shills say would hurt lending, as if these scumbags were in the money lending business anyway with banks and corporations hoarding cash but the trickle down effect would likely be devastating. In our uniquely American brand of fascist country trickle down economics aka cutting taxes for the rich has zero benefit for the working class. But as Bush in his waning months and then OBushma in his first two and a half years such schemes are wonderful little hooks to sell the rubes so that the gambling losses of the big Wall Street banks are socialized through government confiscation of taxpayer dollars is just one more knife in the backs of Boobus Americanus. I am amazed at how, on a weekly basis that prices at the local grocery stores continue to rise, gas prices are on the way back to 4 bucks a gallon again and the GOP pledges to focus on job creation have devolved into the standard treasonous pledges to not raise taxes on wealthy chiselers, keep the gays from getting married and out of the military, Muslim bashing and here in the diseased penis of America otherwise known as Florida – anti-bestiality laws. Not that the latter would be a necessarily bad thing were it to encourage the scumbaggers to not reproduce.
But I digress ….
The fascist Republican party as it exists today in the advanced stages of it’s mutation would be nothing more than an object of mockery were it not for the dregs of society that comprise the party base, the serious haters and jacked up on religion crusaders who are hellbent at destroying America from within. They have very serious ideas about the type of society that they desire and would use every bit of law enforcement power of the very government that they so proclaim to despise in order to ensure that their hated enemies, gays, libruls [sic], feminists, Muslims and assorted other non-white, non-Christians. The blacks can be put back in their place because Christ knows that Obama cannot be allowed to reassemble his ACORN forces to mount an assault to enslave the white race and that would happen save the useful boot licking uncle Toms like Allen West, the savage anti-Muslim bigot Herman Cain and Clarence Thomas. The teabaggers and their religious right brothers in arms though have a particular hatred for intellectualism that borders on sheer fanaticism. As I stated earlier, this sort of hard core focused rage and the need to crush all who do not conform under their jack-boots is as vigorous and as unyielding as that of the Khmer Rouge along with their Year Zero social reform policy.
A came across a very horrifying bit from a 1974 Chicago Tribune account on the Khmer Rouge:
“I was very frightened when I saw the Khmer Rouge [Tea Party] saw off the neck of a civilian [gay, Muslim, liberal etc] with the sharp edge of sugar palm leaves,” said Preap, standing amid a cluster of refugees beside a row of flimsy huts.“They spent three days cutting his head off,” said Preap. “They sawed a little one morning, and then in the evening, and finally the following day in the morning and then in the evening, and finally the following day in the morning and night.“They made the victim stand up while there were cutting in front of hundreds of people living in the Khmer Rouge area. Then they held him up when he could stand no longer.”The episode was not just an isolated case but one of many I heard during visits to refugee camps. Khmer Rouge soldiers also have used the knife-like edges of sugar palm leaves to lop off the heads of Cambodian officers captured while overrunning nearby towns and military installations.“They want the victims to suffer more and to serve as examples for people,” said one informant. “They denounce them as traitors before the crowd.”“I had to join the Khmer Rouge army or they would have killed me,” said Preap. “Those who refuse to serve they send to their deaths. They walk thru villages telling the people to follow them, and the people must obey.”
When the shit does inevitably hit the fan, exactly what the fascist Republican party wants, these will be the enforcers to hunt down dissenters to the privatization of all that remains, the roads already paid for by the taxpayer will be sold to corporations and plutocrats and the tolls will be crippling to those who travel upon them. Public water systems will be hijacked by profiteers and as in Bolivia, the collection of rainwater will become against the law, the populace has already been largely converted into a nation of rats and snitches courtesy of the fear mongering after 9/11 and if you are found in violation you will be subject to having a pack of foaming at the mouth lunatics wearing tri-corner hats, Captain America costumes and waving Gadsden flags show up at your door to cart you off to the public head-sawing. This makes for one hell of a hedge for the oligarchy and their Republican stooges. And this is exactly why I have recommended that progressives start very seriously rethinking their non-violent tendencies, the street thugs will be the first to be unleashed when the whole thing implodes for the regular folks and a failure to be ready to organize and to respond appropriately will only result in your own heads becoming trophies upon the pyramids of human skulls that they will so enjoy building as a tribute to their fascist leaders.
The Real Reason To Damn Obama
Posted by ttuttle12
Rich’s piece is about this very failure and I excerpt the following:
What haunts the Obama administration is what still haunts the country: the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression. There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers. Nor have there been meaningful reforms that might prevent a repeat catastrophe. Time may heal most wounds, but not these. Chronic unemployment remains a constant, painful reminder of the havoc inflicted on the bust’s innocent victims. As the ghost of Hamlet’s father might have it, America will be stalked by its foul and unresolved crimes until they “are burnt and purged away.”After the 1929 crash, and thanks in part to the legendary Ferdinand Pecora’s fierce thirties Senate hearings, America gained a Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Utility Holding Company Act, and the Glass-Steagall Act to forestall a rerun. After the savings-and-loan debacle of the eighties, some 800 miscreants went to jail. But those who ran the central financial institutions of our fiasco escaped culpability (as did most of the institutions). As the indefatigable Matt Taibbi has tabulated, law enforcement on Obama’s watch rounded up 393,000 illegal immigrants last year and zero bankers. The Justice Department’s ballyhooed Operation Broken Trust has broken still more trust by chasing mainly low-echelon, one-off Madoff wannabes. You almost have to feel sorry for the era’s designated Goldman scapegoat, 32-year-old flunky “Fabulous Fab” Fabrice Tourre, who may yet take the fall for everyone else. It’s as if the Watergate investigation were halted after the cops nabbed the nudniks who did the break-in.Even now, on the heels of Bank of America’s reluctant $8.5 billion settlement with investors who held its mortgage-backed securities, the Obama administration may be handing it and its peers new get-out-of-jail-free cards. With the Department of Justice’s blessing, the Iowa attorney general, Tom Miller, is pushing the 49 other states to sign on to a national financial settlement ending their investigations of the biggest mortgage lenders. What some call a settlement others may find a cover-up. Time reported in April that the lawyer negotiating with Miller for Moynihan’s Bank of America just happened to be a contributor to his 2010 Iowa reelection campaign. If the deal is struck, any truly aggressive state attorneys general, like Eric Schneiderman of New York, will be shut down before they can dig into the full and still mostly uninvestigated daisy chain of get-rich-quick rackets practiced by banks as they repackaged junk mortgages into junk securities.Those in executive suites at the top of that chain have long since fled the scene with the proceeds, while bleeding shareholders, investors, homeowners, and cashiered employees were left with the bills. The weak Dodd-Frank financial-reform law that rose from the ruins remains largely inoperative, since the actual rule-writing was delegated to understaffed agencies now under siege by banking lobbyists and their well-greased congressional overlords. The administration’s much-hyped Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is being sabotaged by Washington Republicans intent on blocking any White House nominee, whether Elizabeth Warren or some malleable hack, to lead it. “We can’t let special interests win this fight,” said Obama when he proposed the agency in October 2009. Well, he missed his moment to fight for both it and Warren, and the special interests won without breaking a sweat.Rather than purge the crash’s crimes, Wall Street’s leaders are sticking to their alibi: Everyone was guilty of fomenting this “perfect storm,” and so no one is. Too-big-to-fail banks are bigger than ever, and Masters of the Universe swagger is back. Even Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, about the only bank chief not to be caught with a suspect balance sheet or a $1,400 office trash can, has taken to channeling Schwarzman. In June, he publicly challenged Ben Bernanke about the intolerable burdens of potential regulation—this despite a 67 percent surge in JPMorgan’s first-quarter profits and a 1,500 percent raise in his own compensation from 2009 to 2010. As good times roar back for corporate America, it’s bad enough that CEOs are collectively sitting on some $1.9 trillion in cash—much of it parked out of the IRS’s reach overseas—instead of hiring. (How many jobs can you buy for $1.9 trillion? America’s total expenditure on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars over a decade has been $1.3 trillion.) But what’s most galling is how many of these executives are sore winners, crying all the way to Palm Beach while raking in record profits and paying some of the lowest tax rates over the past 50 years.The fallout has left Obama in the worst imaginable political bind. No good deed he’s done for Wall Street has gone unpunished. He is vilified as an anti-capitalist zealot not just by Republican foes but even by some former backers. What has he done to deserve it? All anyone can point to is his December 2009 60 Minutes swipe at “fat-cat bankers on Wall Street”—an inept and anomalous Ed Schultz seizure that he retracted just weeks later by praising Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein as “very savvy businessmen.”AND –personal Zelig, the former Clinton Treasury secretary and Harvard Corporation stalwart Robert Rubin. In The Audacity of Hope, published in late 2006, Obama called Rubin, then busily cheerleading the excessive risk at Citigroup, “one of the more thoughtful and unassuming people I know.” Two years later, when Citi cratered and threatened to take the economy with it, Rubin demonstrated his unassuming thoughtfulness by denying that he had anything to do with the toxic investments that cost taxpayers a $45 billion bailout and 52,000 Citi employees their jobs.In his unseemly revolving-door career, Rubin not once but twice sped the Citi apocalypse—first in government, where he and his eventual successor as Treasury secretary, Larry Summers, championed the deregulatory policies that facilitated the consolidation of too-big-to-fail banks, and then in his $15 million-a-year role as Citi’s “guru,” where, by his own later account, he had no idea what was in the worthless paper the bank peddled to greedy dupes. You’d think Obama would have dumped him faster than he did the Reverend Wright, but that’s misreading him. Obama is preternaturally secure on thorny matters of race—as his magnificent speech on the subject made clear—and could distance himself from his preacher with no ambivalence. It’s “unassuming” braininess that’s his blind spot.And so a parade of Rubin acolytes entered the White House, led by Geithner, a nearly lifelong civil servant so identified with the financial Establishment that even Mayor Bloomberg mistakenly introduced him as a Goldman alumnus at a public event in New York last year. It’s Geithner’s influence on policy, however, not his persona, that proved fateful. Not until March 2010 did the White House get its first explicit, modest jobs bill through Congress.Obama had taken office at a true populist moment that demanded more than this. People were gagging over their looted 401(k)s and underwater homes, the AIG bonuses, and the bailouts. Howard Dean rage has never been Obama’s style—hope-and-change was an elegant oratorical substitute—and had he given full voice to the public mood, he would have been pilloried as an “angry black man.” But Obama didn’t have to play Huey Long. He could have pursued a sober but determined execution of justice and an explicit, major jobs initiative—of which there have been exactly none, the too-small stimulus included, to the present day.By failing to address that populist anger, Obama gave his enemies the opening to co-opt it and turn it against him. Which the tea party did, dishonestly but brilliantly, misrepresenting Obama’s health-care-reform crusade as yet another attempt by the elites to screw the taxpayer. (The Democrats haplessly reinforced the charge with marathon behind-the-scenes negotiations with insurance and pharmaceutical-industry operatives.) Once the health-care law was signed, the president still slighted the unemployment crisis. A once-hoped-for WPA-style public-works program, unloved by Geithner, had been downsized in the original stimulus, and now a tardy, halfhearted stab at a $50 billion transportation-infrastructure jobs bill produced a dandy Obama speech but nothing else.Obama soon retreated into the tea-party mantra of fiscal austerity. Short-term spending cuts when spending is needed to create jobs make no sense economically. But they also make no sense politically. The deficit has never been a top voter priority, no matter how loudly the right claims it is. At Obama’s inaugural, Gallup found that 11 percent of voters ranked unemployment as their top priority while only 2 percent did the deficit. Unemployment has remained a stable public priority over the deficit ever since, usually by at least a 2-to-1 ratio. In a CBS poll immediately after the Democrats’ “shellacking” of last November—a debacle supposedly precipitated by the tea party’s debt jihad—the question “What should Congress concentrate on in January?” yielded 56 percent for “economy/jobs” and 4 percent for “deficit reduction.”AND –There’s not much Obama can do to alter the economy by 2012, given the debt-ceiling fight, the long campaign, and nihilistic Capitol Hill antagonists opposed to any government spending that might create jobs and, by extension, help Obama keep his own. But the central question before the nation couldn’t be clearer: Who pays? The taxpayers bailed out the elite; now it’s the elite’s turn to return the favor. Massive cuts to the safety net combined with scant sacrifice from those at the top is wrong ethically and politically. It is, in the truest sense, un-American. Obama knows this, and he hit a welcome note last week when he urged some higher corporate taxes for hedge funds and the like. But his forays in this direction are tentative and sporadic. You have to wonder why he isn’t seizing the moment to articulate and fight for the big picture instead of playing a lose-lose game of rope-a-dope with the Republicans on their budgetary turf.Some Obama fans think it’s tactical genius that’s holding him back—his fabled long ball. Americans are no longer as angry as they were in January 2009 so much as they are defeated, depressed, and jaded by the slow recovery and by four decades of raging inequality that tells them the deck is stacked no matter who’s in Washington. Better, then, not to ruffle these still waters—or those easily rattled independents fetishized by political consultants—and instead scare seniors about imminent Medicare cutbacks and plot deep-think policy initiatives that (like health-care reform) might fix America over time. But the voters’ placidity hardly augurs well for Democratic turnout in 2012. And it may not last. All that’s required is one more economic panic to shatter the phony peace and whip the rage back to center stage, once again to the right’s advantage.“A nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous,” Obama declared at his inauguration. What he said on that bright January morning is no less true or stirring now. For all his failings since, he is the only one who can make this case. There’s nothing but his own passivity to stop him from doing so—and from shaking up the administration team that, well beyond the halfway-out-the-door Geithner and his Treasury Department, has showered too many favors on the prosperous. This will mean turning on his own cadre of the liberal elite. But it’s essential if he is to call the bluff of a fake man-of-the-people like Romney. To differentiate himself from the discredited Establishment, he will have to mount the fight he has ducked for the past three years.The alternative is a failure of historic proportions. Those who gamed the economy to near devastation—so much so that the nation turned to an untried young leader in desperation and in hope—would once again inherit the Earth. Unless and until there’s a purging of the crimes that brought our president to his unlikely Inauguration Day, much more in America than the second term of his administration will be at stake.
The Obama presidency has been one endless series of failures, cave-ins, half-measures, broken campaign promises, capitulations and pissed away opportunities for change. The only good moment for the man who failed to close Gitmo or even better yet send Lloyd Blankfein and the rest of the Wall Street criminals there was the hit on the bad assed bogeyman of the past decade Osama bin Laden, days after a blistering dressing down of the pompous ass that is Donald Trump. Even that was a failure in that Obama failed to use the bully pulpit once again to wave our Emanuel Goldstein’s bloody scalp, perhaps it had something to do with the missing body but you get the point. That the fascist GOP is actually looking like an alternative to Obama in the form of Mitt Romney prancing about I his magic red, white and blue underwear is a stunning example of how badly that Obama has been up to this point. I really loved Rich’s line about the O-Bots, those who are the same type of apologists for Barry O. that drove the left so batshit during the Bush years. Rich wrote “ Some Obama fans think it’s tactical genius that’s holding him back—his fabled long ball.” To this I quote myself from a previous post entitled Money Doesn’t Talk: It Swears:
There will be no help for anybody but the pigs at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase coming from the Obama administration, face it people, the only change that the Pope of Hope really ever stood for was to provlde left cover for the gargantuan upwards redistribution of wealth. Obama is quite obviously even worse than Bush as the wars continue and mount in number (under the malarkey guise of humanitarian interventions), the torture never stops, the constitution continues to be disemboweled and the airports are filled with dooling thugs in TSA uniforms with the full blessing of the U.S. government to feel up pre-pubescent little boys and girls. Hell, Bush never could have gotten away with that one and when it comes to economic relief, Le Enfant Terrible did actually send people checks for $600. I always got a sardonic little kick out of the silly liberals who only made excuses for Obama (and still do) in that he was the chess master, or Michael Jordan just studying the opposing team’s defense and ready to explode at any moment into a whirling dervish of athletic daredeviltry as he broke down the formidable defense of the Bad Boys for the championship hardware. The truth, and it is as dark as the proverbial black steer’s tookus on a moonless prairie night is that Obama is the chessmaster, it’s checkmate for the working class and he is just like Michael Jordan, a greedy, amoral, selfish millionaire prick who once commented that “Republicans buy sneakers too” rather than doing the right thing in using his global celebrity to promote progressive social change.For some reason Jordan’s famous quote conjures up one of Obama’s, the one where he proclaimed that if Americans were being denied their right to collectively bargain that he would put on his own pair of comfortable shoes and join them on the picket lines. This alas like so many other things (wars,closing Gitmo, renegotiating trade pacts etc) was just more of the same bullshit about hope and change marketed by Wall Street’s soon to be new bagman at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.