The other day I got a call from an Obama phone solicitor. He wanted money of course, and it had been over a year since I made a contribution to Obama or any Democrat for that matter. You see, it was not long ago that I had voted for change that I could believe in. And since then I have been watching that change manifest itself as more of the same Neocon-based bullshit. It seems that Obama is afraid to do not only the right thing, but the things he promised us in order to raise money for his last campaign and to get elected as president.
I fumed when I listened to this dude on the phone, asking for money. I did give him several pieces of my mind, though, beginning with how Obama pardoned the phone companies BEFORE any trial or indictments. They illegally helped Bush wiretap and listen in on private conversations of over 1.5 million Americans (Gee whiz, were there that many suspects as terrorists that needed looking at?). He tried to answer most of my objections with swift and sweep-it-under-the-rug comments, e.g., “Well you cannot expect everything to happen just right because Obama needs to bargain for the things he wants to change, sometimes.”
Bargain, my butt, I told him…Obama promised not only to change things when he got to Washington; he said he would go after the wrongdoers. So what would be wrong with Obama letting our justice system run its course and let the phone companies be tried for breaking the law and helping George W. Bush shred our Constitution by wiretapping us without proper court authority? Is the pardoning of the phone companies not just another example of government by Executive Dictator, so typical of the Decider?
Furthermore, Pres. O, what happened to closing Guantanamo, restoring habeas corpus, and restoring our rights instead of strengthening the Patriot Act for his own Executive privilege?
Old Washington practice would be to favor Wall Street in times of financial crisis instead of letting the corrupt and inept companies fail. Yet Obama fashioned a plan to save many of the companies because they were deemed “too big to fail.” Too many jobs would be lost, he told us all, and many were saved, e.g., AIG who recklessly insured too many bad mortgage credit default swaps, not to mention other bad loans. So we taxpayers got to pay for saving their incompetent ass. Ditto for all the banks that failed, Freddie Mac, Sallie Mae, the list is endless. We get to pay for all that mismanagement, thank you very much.
Banks got endless bailout billions as a stimulus package to the economy, yet Americans saw very little of the stimulus package money the banks were supposed to loan out but DID NOT.
I am one Democrat who does not believe the government has endless money to bail out private companies who the government says are too big to fail. If there be job losses by keeping our government noses out of private businesses, then so be it. Is it government’s business to bail out business? No. Is it government’s business to help it’s citizens? As long as it collects tax revenues, YES. That’s the purpose of taxes, not to let Halliburton have no-bid contracts to sell us meals they don’t deliver or $500 hammers.
So then to the phone solicitor, I mentioned accountability. Obama promised to go after the wrongdoers in government, and he and all the Democrats who were elected in the 2008 General Election, were given the voter mandate to clean it all up and to impeach those who clearly had a hand in bringing America to the financial and moral brink of destruction. Yet what did they do on the day after the election, even before their first cup of coffee? Well, here they were with the talking heads on Good Morning America and CNN, doing a complete turnaround by taking impeachment off the table! Say what!!!? Wasn’t going after the wrongdoers the reason you all got elected? Did they think we wouldn’t notice?
And what about Bush lying to get us into war with Iraq? Oh, it wasn’t a lie, the phone dude told me, and nothing that Bush ever did was impeachable. Geez, Louise, I thought, my God, and then if the Bush White House committed no impeachable offenses, how could anyone ever be impeached? Did they have to get a bj in the White House and lie about it later to get impeached? Yes, he told me, lying was an impeachable offense. But not arbitrarily attacking Iraq based upon having weapons of mass destruction pointed at the US. And when later it became evident that there were no WMDs, oh shucks, what can you say? You can’t guess right every time, he said. I began to wonder whose side he was on. And was his mental outlook emanating from Obama himself? Was Obama just another slick politician?
So even if Bush did not lie about taking us to war and causing the deaths of over 150,000 innocent human beings is it not clear that he did NOT take the advice of his own CIA Chief who said that his information that Hussein was trying to buy Uranium from Niger was bogus and not to use it in Bush’s state of the union address? He used it. Knowingly! Is that not impeachable? If not the thousands killed and maimed, what about the extra $4 Trillion dollars Bush borrowed and spent to finance the Iraq War? Was that little ditty not an impeachable offense? And Obama promised to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan? What happened to his promises? Is the only reason now to support Obama simply to insure that a bloody Neocon, like Sarah Palin, will not be elected by the GOP or worse, the Tea Baggers and the bloody Koch family?
I mentioned other strangeness in Obama’s behavior that gives me pause. When Bush was warned not to go to Spain or Italy for his book tour, he was warned that he might be nabbed and tried in a World Court for war crimes. Enter WikiLeaks whose pilfered records show that the Obama administration exerted pressure on Spain and Italy not to collar Bush. They reconsidered when apparently Obama threatened to withdraw US foreign aid to those countries. My, my. Please tell me, Mr. Obama, why would you do such a thing? If anybody at all is guilty in the eyes of the world, why would you interfere with a just due process under the moral laws of the world? And again, why are you protecting Bush by taking impeachment off the table and intimidating countries who think he is guilty of torture and other high crimes? You presidents got an exclusive club where you all hang together even if it’s wrong?
Then Obama did an unforgivable thing, I told Mr. Phone Guy. Obama extended Bush’s $2 Trillion tax cut for the rich! When all the Tea Baggers and Republicans are bitching about doing away with Obama care and making cuts to Social Security benefits, Obama does what George Bush would do if he were still president: HE EXTENDED THE TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH! While talking about cutting other programs for the poor, the working class, etc., all the while teachers in Wisconsin are demonstrating against an oppressive governor Scott Walker who is taking away their union’s bargaining abilities! Oh, it was necessary to do that, right? Bull. Extending the Bush II tax cuts is the same thing John Boehner, Newt Gingrich, Bush, and the rest of the thugs who want to drown the Middle and Working Classes in the bath tub, would do. The Koch’s must love it. Sarah Palin must think Obama is as dumb as she is. And it hurts to say that he acts like it. He forgot the promises he made and the platform of “change you can believe in” he ran on.
But hold on. The guy persisted and made a few points that made me think I might be a bit too hard on Obama. So in the interest of getting rid of the dude and in voting in advance to not see a Neocon replace Obama, I told him to send me a ticket in the mail and I would give Obama a $50 contribution. I know, I know, many of you will think I fell and hit my head. But I have always had hope. And the audacity of hope sometimes makes you crazy when it comes to women and/or politics.
So the very next day CNN says that Obama is going to extend the military tribunal court system at Guantanamo in order to try more of the “military combatants” that no state would try in our criminal court system. Say what? He ain’t going to shut G down, but now we are going back to the Stone Age and try them again by a military tribunal? Why don’t we just shoot them without a trial, someone asked from the back room. A technicality is what troubles Obama and makes him a deer in the headlights? For real? What kind of president is he? Are all of his promises going to be broken, eventually?
So I am thinking about the ethics involved in making promises. I have never broken one I made, though none of mine have been as tough as the president’s, to say the least. But if he breaks them, why should I be so righteous and keep mine? I have to wonder what the phone solicitor and Obama might think if, instead of sending them a check for $50, I simply returned the form with a note: “Sorry, but until you keep your promises, I won’t be keeping mine.” I am still struggling over it. What do you think?