1937 Redux? The Obama Freeze
It's smoke and mirrors. The big picture, the big, obscene expenditures on war, get not just short, but NO shrift. We cannot talk about their costs in relation to the needs of the country which are never considered to be competing needs because the controlling class has decided to make it that way. And in that controlling class I include the media which rarely questions the equation.
Obama is trying to pull off the trifecta; continue to open-endedly fund endless war; pretend to get the budget under control with a freeze (while ignoring the military component); pretend to fund essential domestic programs adequately in the guns and butter mold.
If he were serious about changing direction, he wouldn't mount this charade. He wouldn't just change the optics. He would fire Gaithner, Summers and, preeminently Rahm. Even as mere symbols, which of course they are not, it would indicate a president with actual and active cognizance, not one who cogitates and poses and let's the same old actors come up with the same suboptimized solutions.
And then hire some folks with actual productive ideas, not just blab about "fighting" for the people, and floating gratuitious, self elevating talk about being a good one termer versus a mediocre two termer. Uh, Earth to Barack: we make that call, not you. And it ain't looking good for even the former.
I'm afraid it's gone and getting goner every day so to speak. The public is so jaded on politics and politicians, especially at the federal level. And yet, for a brief, and perhaps misguided moment, the country carved out an exception for Barack Obama. So far, when he should have multiplied the force of the initial good will and support out there, he blew it. A gut punch to the optimism he inspired. A massive miscalculation and exercise in back room politics that has failed miserably, and an incredibly naive and/or hubristic display of denying the writing the repubs have been putting on the wall all along: "we are not going to play; not now, not ever". Or a masterful con job?
Some say it was never in the plans anyway. Doesn't matter. It's done. And still we wait for a signal that Obama really get's it.
Obama is trying to pull off the trifecta; continue to open-endedly fund endless war; pretend to get the budget under control with a freeze (while ignoring the military component); pretend to fund essential domestic programs adequately in the guns and butter mold.
If he were serious about changing direction, he wouldn't mount this charade. He wouldn't just change the optics. He would fire Gaithner, Summers and, preeminently Rahm. Even as mere symbols, which of course they are not, it would indicate a president with actual and active cognizance, not one who cogitates and poses and let's the same old actors come up with the same suboptimized solutions.
And then hire some folks with actual productive ideas, not just blab about "fighting" for the people, and floating gratuitious, self elevating talk about being a good one termer versus a mediocre two termer. Uh, Earth to Barack: we make that call, not you. And it ain't looking good for even the former.
I'm afraid it's gone and getting goner every day so to speak. The public is so jaded on politics and politicians, especially at the federal level. And yet, for a brief, and perhaps misguided moment, the country carved out an exception for Barack Obama. So far, when he should have multiplied the force of the initial good will and support out there, he blew it. A gut punch to the optimism he inspired. A massive miscalculation and exercise in back room politics that has failed miserably, and an incredibly naive and/or hubristic display of denying the writing the repubs have been putting on the wall all along: "we are not going to play; not now, not ever". Or a masterful con job?
Some say it was never in the plans anyway. Doesn't matter. It's done. And still we wait for a signal that Obama really get's it.
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