Smiling Faces, Smiling Faces Sometimes they Don't Tell the Truth!

Obama is turning out to be an O'Bummer for progressives throughout the United States and the world. He is also making what look like huge political mistakes that almost certainly doom a second term.

For one thing, Obama has adopted the Bush Wars as his own children and now wants to win the wars he previously pretended to oppose. Like Bush he lies about withdrawal from Iraq when he and Bush mean "permanent occupation". Now Obama can be a stupid reactionary and tie a millstone around his own neck, or should I say the millstone of Iraq and the mountain of Afghanistan. Obama will conquer Afghanistan. Right! Even Bush wasn't that stupid!

In a similar fashion Obama speaks eloquently about corruption on Wall Street and then hands trillions of imaginary dollars over to the crooks. He seeks to restore the corrupt and utterly capitalistic way of doing things at your and my and our grandchildren's expense. This debt burden is something he is putting on the backs of the working classes. Bush, Obama what is the substantial difference? I don't think our grandchildren will put up with it and I don't think that their grandparents should silently allow this brutal financial coup to be consolidated.

What about universal health care? Obama got votes as he posed as someone who wants the best health care system Americans can get. Yet he has shut out "single payer" one hundred percent. He is all about big pharm, big hospital chains, big hmo's, big insurance and big medical business in all of its opulent excesses. Our health care is the last thing on his health care agenda! When the healthcare bubbles burst Obama will be one of the fools making it happen, quite eloquently he will note that he "screwed up" and yes we are the ones getting "screwed".

And the computerized medical charting is all about an Orwellian Medical database available to every insurance company, hmo and health care hustler with the gumption to pick your pocket. Thank you for the hope but what about delivering single payer, not a life time of rip offs as each and every one of us struggle to get the healthcare that is regarded as a right in the rest of the world. Only your family and the patient will have trouble getting your medical records now. Everyone else gets their own copy. Your life is a commodity to be bought and sold like pork bellies.

Of course you need only look out the window to see the Orwellian video cameras on every street corner. It's an Obamination unto the goddess of liberty and justice!

Obama's change is superficial change, a change in style, and a big lurch to the right after a deft feint to the left. Obama is technocratic, a public relations whiz, a Kennedyesque monster that seeks to conquer, murder and maim with a little more stealth and even more secrecy than Bush. Hence, the so-called counterinsurgency strategy he seeks to apply to Pakistan and Afghanistan and perhaps Latin America once again, if he can get away with it! Is Obama's change just a different kind of killing? With drone murdering hundreds at a strike he is outdoing Bush in that sort to killing. Maybe Obama meant more killings the same way when he was referring to "change". He was and is always vague about "change", big vocabulary though.

Even more than Bush he has the press corp on a leash! Every question is approved. Sounds like a press conference in a dictatorship. President Obama is President Big Brother?

Skin color does not a progressive make as anyone with any experience knows. And now President Obama refuses to release memos, and other documents he already promised to release while he attacks the ACLU. It's all about hiding American crimes just as with Bush. Is this Bush III or what?

Then, Obama tries to pass the buck about prosecuting Republican criminals and various conservative, torturing criminals to others like his appointees, as if someone else was the President.

Obama is a rightist! We can't count on Obama or the Democrats for anything but the same old conservative crap or an even worse financial dictatorship strangling our individual lives, families,communities, nation and world!

So when it comes to the next Supreme Court nominee we can bet that Obama will hem and haw and say this and that and then he will say the exact opposite of this and that. This may pass through several complete cycles as he dances around the issues while endeavoring to appear to be addressing them. At the end of the day he may be looking for a torturer or someone who authorized torture for the Supreme Court, just to prove he is soooo coool, sooo broad minded, sooo loyal to the elites and sooo liberal in one of the worst senses of the term "liberal".

There are, no doubt, klansmen and Republican party leaders who are willing and able to prove Obama is no racist by serving on the court as his nominee and Obama fighting for them in the Congress to quash any progressive opposition. Too bad, Obama probably can't find any old Nazi's to serve on the court but Naziphile, Arnold Schwarzenneger's dad was "just a policeman" during the Third Reich (yeah an SS policeman!) Maybe Arnold can be Obama's kind of Supreme Court Justice?

So am I being too hard on Mr. Obama or not hard enough?

Let's see, if Obama nominates a progressive and then withdraws or sabotages the nomination of that progressive? President Progressive Poser, that would fit!

"Smiling faces, smiling faces, sometimes they don't tell the truth!" Mr. Obama, shame on your smiling lies about being for the average citizen, for children, for the workers, for women and for the eocnomically and racially oppressed. Or did you ever even say those things? Were we just wishing and hoping that you were progressive even though you said again and again things that make you sound like a pseudoliberal who fears any struggle against any real world conservatives.

Mr. Obama looks more and more like a technocratic deracialized whiz kid of the ruling class. Obama dances a good dance but any fool can see whom he is dancing for, whatever their vocabulary!

Mr Obama, you are dancing for the past, for the rich and for the financial elites. You are dancing for the capitalist empire capitalisms would be conquests. You are yet another emperor serving the empire of greed and total capitalist domination. You should be known as President Wallstreet not President Obama!

Too bad, too, you seemed like such a "nice guy"!

Posted by PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION at 4:04 AM

OBAMA TAKES ON BUSH'S LINE ON SO-CALLED MISSILE DEFENSE

Obama's trip to Russia seems to offer up some things that could be progressive, maybe, and then some old Bush policies.

Were real commitments to meaningful reductions made? I hope so but I need to look at what the reduction in nuclear weapons and missile launchers is really all about. Sometimes they just take out the warhead or some warhead component that could be reattached in a few hours or less.

So what is the fate of the decommissioned weapons and were they already decommissioned. I am skeptical.

It would be good to see the nuclear weapons decommissioned and is a step that is in the progressive direction but if both powers still retain thousands of weapons the reduction will still look relatively meaningless to nuclear have nots or those with relatively tiny arsenals like Pakistan, India, China, Israel and Korea.

As for the ridiculous advocacy for the so-called "missile defense system"
it is Bush Lite all over again.

The big change is the willingness of Russia and the United States to work together in fighting the wars to Russias southeast in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran may feel safer now that the Russian ally is providing a corridor for United States military forces. I suppose this may be necessary because Uzbekistan is closing the US military base there.
I don't really know but I suppose supplying these remote wars is a real
problem for the empire.

Once again, the apparent willingness of the United States to call Russia
"equal" appears to be a recognition that Russia is a regional power to be worked with rather than an enemy to be continuously opposed. It almost looks like an alliance?

WHAT IS PROGRESSIVE ANYWAY?

I suppose we can hardly wonder how progressive some political policy, theory or act is unless we have a standard by which to judge what is progressive and what is not.

One might say that to side with the have nots against the haves is progressive but a little history suggests not always. Do you side with this set of have nots or that other set? Women and Blacks saw themselves as at odds in the post civil war era and we can easily see that individuals and groups adopt a hodge podge of progressive and not so progressive views.

An oppressive patriarchy may characterize a progressive nationalist struggle. Workers may become Nazis rather than progressive socialists. Of course all these persons, supposedly animated by this or that ism acts in a world of unfolding realities that may or may not be under any influence by the actor.

Obama is an imperialist leader. If so, it seems difficult to characterize him as a progressive imperialist leader but he certainly seems able to unite with more nations than his predecessor.

He seems committed to some sort of draw down in Iraq but I would be surprised if he actually goes for one hundred percent withdrawal.

Obama has adopted the war in Afghanistan as his own and Iraq may now descend into a civil war or civil wars. If the Taliban are routed by the current offensive in Afghanistan I will be surprised. It seems they are not making themselves easy targets this go of it. Taliban positional warfare in Pakistan seems to have failed in Swat. Are the Taliban really there in South Afghanistan and if so in what numbers?

CONCERN ABOUT OBAMA'S SAFETY AGAIN

I suppose someone in the White House, especially these days, knows they are risking their lives to serve in that capacity. Obama is no different and yet after his criticism of the various settlements (fortresses really) on the West Bank. This is the last opportunity for these settlers to live out a dream that they take very literally. I don't know what can be done to moderate the extremist tendencies of the settlers. They have gotten a lot of mileage out of being tough and never backing down and in this situation that could mean someone tries to harm Obama or Israelis working for a two state solution.

Rabin was assassinated by one of these fanatics and the "Holy Land" seems to create martyrs out of folks that would just be cranks elsewhere. So I suppose Obama is forewarned and hopefully will watch his back in the States as well. The same goes for all the white supremacists and extreme anti-Muslims who populate the States. They must be livid after hearing Obama quote the Koran and say other nice things about Muslims. Then by using his personal story Obama really put himself as a human being on the line.

Of course the danger of extremist violence from other quarters such as AQ cannot be ruled out but Israel and the settler militias seem more of a threat and may engage in provocative and warlike acts meant to sabotage the prospects of a two state solution by attacking Iran with nuclear weapons while carrying out an expulsion of the Palestinians in the midst of the crisis caused by the nuclear war. Of course Pakistan is the nation with the Islamic bomb so we cannot rule out an effort to trigger a war that devastates the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, or uses it up on targets not Israel. Israel and the United States could collude in these endeavors while Obama waxes eloquently about settlements and a two state solution. Then oops, a little nuclear or not so little nuclear war or wars and the Palestinians are doing the Cherokee march out of Palestine or getting killed like in the original Nakba.

This seems unthinkable but it is certainly not inconceivable. Nations build these nuclear weapons and one has already used them actively. Nuclear weapons clearly provide a degree of security to a nation that nations without them do not possess. Hopefully Israel doesn't really wan't to blow up the world or Iran and Pakistan either.

I suppose the costs to the world ecosystem would be quite significant if a few dozen nukes were detonated in Iran, Pakistan, India and who knows where else? Will we all line up like good little soldiers then? I fear so and yet what we should be doing is everything we can to stop such a nuclear attack by any party.

OBAMA'S SPEECH IN CAIRO

It is remarkable that Obama has spoken out so strongly about an end to Jewish settlements (fortresses really) on Palestinian Territory recognized as Palestinian territory, by all parties now with the exception of Israel or certain Israeli trends.

Some Israelis still seek the conquest of all of Palestine. This was the goal of the Zionist founders and most Israeli leaders ever since. Then there are the settlers which are the armed militias that illegally occupy the West Bank. Settlements were expelled from Gaza but settlers want to return.

That is what the settlements are all about, making a two state solution impossible and creating the basis for the complete disenfranchisement of the Palestinians, the indigenous people of Palestine.

Today, in Cairo, Obama seemed to repeat this opposition to the Jewish military outposts known as "settlements". Will he flip flop? He hasn't yet.

Obama's speech to the so-called Muslim world, really it seems more the Arab-Muslim world was in many ways remarkable as well. His speech was nuanced and seemed steeped in a level of understanding and even wisdom generally unthinkable for an American President. I will bask in the notion that the United States has a President who is not obsessed with demonic forces such as Gog and Magog but seems fully in contact with reality!

Obama's cultural literacy and indeed multicultural literacy and yes understanding of those Abrahamic texts allowed him to wax as we hope
the good King would alway wax, with genuine respect, understanding and compassion in his heart. I want to believe that all this improvement in understanding is not towards some similar or new evil, I want to believe in Obama and those words he spoke today. So I believe will millions and tens of millions.

And if Obama flips and flops or is unable to continue his efforts in the future I believe that those who heard his words today, women of the Abrahamic faiths in particular will change the world, will remake the world with the wisdom of soft but working hands.

Yes the feminist revolution is rising in the United States and the whole world. Women will not be held back. Women will soon rule the world in a way they never have since the earliest times. It is a great hope and a great challenge for those of us attached to patriarchal rule.

His words in support of women was a very politic and powerful idea. One wonders how Bush missed such a simple way to appeal for change, one based on words, mutual understanding and mutual support rather than warfare.

For the devil is also in the details and in the many ommissions. Hopefully this imperfect vessel of some real understanding will help revolutionize the world.

I have to say I see no abandonment of military rulers or monarchs by Obama. Will such a speech intentionally or not undermine such rulers?
If only Obama had a streak of Napoleon he might win the world by love and understanding alone. Yet the rulers are intact, I do not think he plans on replacing them?

Why Egypt? Unfortunately it is probably to fix the creation of a Palestinian state so that such a state is entirely under the control of Abbas and the CIA. The Egyptian military dictator is part of fixing the deal so Hamas is iced out of all power and influence and so that the Palestinians stay on the reservation.

While Israel can be thought of as a semi-autonomous sub-imperialism and European white settler state Egypt is really still a semi-colonial dependency of the United States.

So it is a lot like the election of Obama. Obama offers progressive hope but is he a Judas goat of progressive politics, leading us to oppression and injustice rather than hunting us down and fighting us as an open opponent. In other words, "Is he a Democrat?"

WILL OBAMA CONDEMN AND OPPOSE THE INVASION OF GAZA?

Obama has done nothing to indicate an understanding of the oppression of the Palestinian people. If anything he has simply pandered to the Zionists. He has not condemned the siege of Palestine and now we can see what he says about todays Mumbai-like massacre of Palestinians and the beginning of a military invasion of Gaza.

I predict he will not condemn the invasion but support it.

OBAMA HAS DONE LITTLE TO SIGNAL PROGRESSIVE CHANGE

As we wait impatiently for the Obama administration to begin we can say that we are at once relieved and prepared to be profoundly disappointed. On the one hand Obama could hardly be worse than the Bush regime. Yet he has appointed a gaggle of Clintonites to his new White House staff. Is the Obama administration going to be some peculiar version of Clinton III?

Of course we will have to wait for deeds in order to see if Obama is any less in the back pocket of the fossil fuel industries. Will he, in fact support a genuinely green energy configuration for the United States or will he push such nonsense as "clean coal", continuing dependence on oil for transportation and we already know he likes nuclear power. Of course all of these choices make it possible for a few investors to make a killing charging most of us for our energy usage. What weneed is a return to public utilities that are controlled by scientific minded citizens who want to see the public get the necessary power they need without destroying our climate through global warming.

He seems to be realloy in big with the financial capitalists. Just about everyone in his administration is a financial capitalist or has been at some time in their careers. I don't see how anything progressive can come out of that.

If Obama is waiting to signal progressive reforms he is doing a good job of hiding his intentions. So far he sounds like he thinks the political campaign is still underway, continuing to evade the real policies he will seek to implement. Yet at the end of the day flowery rhetoric without substance will satisfy no one. He doesn't even talk the talk.