Obama’s Bankrupt Presidency & the Prospects for Real Change
Sunday, 7. February 2010 by Mike_Mejia
As 2009 has given way to 2010, chants of ‘Yes, we can’ have given away to groans of “What the hell?” There is no question the turn of events in the last month or two has dealt a severe blow to American liberalism. The Democratic Party, which thought itself on the verge of creating a new, lasting coalition after eight years of Republican misrule and the near collapse of the U.S. economy in 2008 propelled them to power, now find themselves with their backs against the wall. Barack Obama simultaneously managed to dishearten his base while mobilizing his conservative opposition. This has led to a perfect political storm in which nothing of real substance has changed from the Bush years, yet somehow the fans of Rush Limbaugh believe Socialism has been imposed on the nation.
Even though many progressives knew little about then-Senator Barack Obama, we were so disgusted with the Bush Administration and nearly thirty years of Republican domination (in one form or another) we were willing to give Obama a chance to bring his “change” to America. As it turned out, those of us who were so excited about the historic moment of electing America’s first African American President had seriously deluded ourselves. Nothing in Obama’s brief voting record as a U.S. Senator indicated he was a politician with any cojones whatsoever. Obama did not wait long to disappoint. Even before taking office, he began choosing for his staff and cabinet the same kind of people Hillary Clinton would have chosen. Then there was, of course, the Rod Blagojevich scandal, which reminded us all of the corrupt political culture that has pervaded the city from whence Obama cut his political teeth. Citing all the betrayals Obama, in my view, has made since taking office would take up too much space: From the choice of Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary to Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff to the decision to conduct a surge in Afghanistan, Obama has really bent over backward to piss liberal voters off.
Republicans have a different view. Somehow, they think Obama’s stimulus plan constituted ‘socialism’, even though it was composed of only slightly more money spent than Bush’s bank bailout in 2008. The conservatives then screamed about a “government takeover of health care”, even though the health care plan proposed had far more input from insurance and drug companies than it did from followers of Marx or Lenin. The one issue the Republicans are correct about is that all the additional social spending has driven up the federal deficit, but it is quite odd the chronic deficits never bothered conservatives much when they were being run up by the previous Administration. Nevertheless, as little evidence as there is to support the conservative standpoint, their views have held out, especially amongst independents, who are flocking back to Republicans. The proof of the independent defection to the GOP was demonstrated by the political earthquake that occurred recently when the Massachusetts Senate seat left open by the death of Ted Kennedy went to a Republican, Scott Brown, effectively killing health care reform and putting Obama’s Presidency on life support. The loss signals a virtual slaughter of Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections. If Obama goes by Bill Clinton’s playbook, he’ll soon choose a Dick Morris-style sleazebag political consultant and bend over backwards to Corporate America (as if he could bend anymore than he already has) in order to amass a war chest meant to destroy any serious competition. In the meantime, he’ll sign legislation further moving him and his Party from any pretense of progressive ideals. In other words, Obama will continue to sell us all down the river, only at a faster rate. Thus, the Democratic base that organized so well to help win Obama the election will be even further marginalized.
Adding insult to injury, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of cash to support or defeat candidates in elections. This means that, soon, politicians in the Democratic Party are to become even less likely to fight for real reform (if such a thing is possible), as they become cowed by the prospect of multimillion-dollar smear campaigns to defeat them, the likes of which happened to John Kerry in the 2004 election, only worse. Liberals will be implored to stay on board: We will be warned that America has turned rightward and more bellicose and we must support the Democrats as the most progressive choice that is politically possible. Read more ?
Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. She came to national attention in June 2002, when she testified before Congress about serious lapses before 9/11 that helped account for the failure to prevent the attacks. She now writes and speaks on ethical decision-making and on balancing civil liberties with the need for effective investigation.
Despite the current futility, many constitutionalists, legalists, analysts, and activists are writing, talking, and arguing about the legality or illegality, constitutionality or unconstitutionality, practicality or impracticality, of these surveillance and search practices of our ‘National Security State.’ There is a plethora of material out there for you to read or listen to on those points, so there is no need for me to cover all that has been covered already; over and over. I am not going to discuss the tedious and ambiguous laws, nor am I going to waste time on the vague and irrelevant notion of and argument on security. No. I intend to focus on the subjects of these practices; the people; the masses, in fact, the entire population as the willing recipients who have come to view and accept themselves as suspects. Isn’t this what we have become; a nation of suspects?
Thanks to a reader’s tip I became aware of this peculiar and interesting 
Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute and the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University. He has written nine books, including Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, and the best-selling American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. He spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, and served for eight years as the Middle East bureau chief of The New York Times, where he shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism, for coverage of terrorism. Hedges also received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. His weekly column is published on 
As a result of these actions, I have been forced to conclude that the pernicious influence of money on politics has become a clear and present danger to the functioning of our Constitutional Democratic Republic. I have further been forced to conclude that the elective system we have currently in place no longer provides for Real Representative Government responsive to the needs of the citizenry at large. I have, therefore, long pondered what changes can be made to restore citizen control of and real representation within that government. With the recent Supreme Court decision throwing out over 100 years of legal precedent, I do not see Public financing of elections as a credible path to reform. It is time to consider radical solutions to this problem. Since the acknowledged intent of the framers was to ensure that representatives to our government would accurately reflect the citizenry at large, what is needed is a mechanism to restore and reinforce that reflection.
I am certain all of you know of the infamous New York Times reporter Judith Miller. You know, the dark lady who worked with the Bush administration’s Pentagon to sell us the war with Iraq – based on planted made-up stories on WMD; the one who was involved in the Plame case? The one who ended up not getting fired, but retired from the New York Times, took a job with the Fox News Channel, and joined the conservative Manhattan Institute think-tank? Yes, that Judith Miller you all know about.
Well, here is the 
Our first post on the American Turkish Council’s new chairman, Richard Armitage, focused on his early years and his involvement with Southeast Asia’s 
In 1999 Richard Armitage joined an 
Dr. Julien Mercille is a lecturer in US foreign policy at University College Dublin, where he moved after obtaining his PhD from UCLA. He teaches on US history and foreign policy and has published academic articles on Iran, Iraq and the Cold War and is now researching the “War on Drugs” and Afghanistan. He has also written for various websites and magazines on those topics and others.
Andy Worthington is a journalist and historian, based in London. He is the author of 
One thing that remains consistent over the last 30 years in observing America’s participation in Afghanistan is that mistakes and errors of judgment, no matter how egregious or self-defeating, never seem to get corrected. In fact, in its effort to rationalize a growing culture of war-making from Vietnam to Afghanistan, America has come around to embracing the insanity of the fictional Colonel Kurtz.
