Obama a Weakling?

On this blog I wrestled with the idea that Obama was a manufactured creation, pulled out of nowhere by the real political masters of U.S.-America to convince jaded, angry, disillusioned USian voters that electoral politics in their country was still meaningful.

I'd decided that nobody is that smart. No group of people in the USA is that powerful. I decided that Obama is just what he appears to be at first glance. A charismatic African-American politician who has learned how to play the game (which for him includes soaring, but vague, rhetoric and a devotion to the status-quo of an outsider wanting to get in) who has found himself in the right place at the right time.

But I've been confounded by the mindless absurdity and excess of his latest behaviour. Most notably his stated desire to go around Congress and to justify "preventative [or prolonged] detention" through an Executive Order, and thereby assert an expansion of presidential power that even bush II couldn't have dreamt of. This desire to create a dangerously powerful, practically lawless emperor out of the office of president seems especially bizarre given the rag-tag, relatively tiny threat of terrorism.

Obama is not so stupid that he shivers in fear at night, worried that he might find himself surrendering to Osama bin-Laden in the Oval Office one day. He's smart enough to know about the excessiveness of his claims to power for the USian political-legal system. Why should he pursue this? He must know that the majority of the US-American population is opposed to this. He must know that the "serious" political-media class in the United States are the same tiny, unrepresentative nitwits who yammered stupidly about flag-pin lapels during the election. Why would he pursue this (among other) absurdities?

I asked this of my partner "ephemeral" and she speculated that he's a weak man, beholden to others and indifferent to how stupid or unpopular their desires are with the voting public. And that actually seems the most plausible thesis. Their is a corporate elite in the USA that desires bailouts for the private sector, continued health for the private insurance industry, oppressive laws against protest and terrifying powers of suppression ("first they came for the Muslims") and on and on, and they've picked Obama to continue to shove this down the throat of the US-American electorate. "Brand Obama" is just that, and he's done a good job of fooling millions of people into believing that politics matters and that they have a (potential, at least) friend in the Democratic Party. They picked Obama out as an attractive package to sell a very toxic product and allowed him to win the presidency. In return, Obama is beholden to them, and he's more a fanatical game-player than an idealist, so he's willing to do these nauseating things to please the power-brokers even if it obviously antagonizes the people he played (the voters) to get the actual votes that won him the presidency.

Can he wake up? It doesn't matter. Electoral politics in the USA are completely bankrupt and useless anyway. The only good Obama is capable of doing is exposing this truth so that even more USian voters learn to abandon their vain hopes and think of some other way to redeem their country.

Three Good Readings

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/28-3 Mark Weisbrot on whether Iran's election was stolen.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/28-10 Reese Elrich says that it was and that the protests are spontaneous

http://counterpunch.org/kozloff06292009.html Nikolas Kozloff on the build-up of tensions between Honduras and the USA.

Welcome Home Abousfian Abdelrazik!

And great thanks to all those who worked to bring this about.

Only in the minds of right-wing doofusi are the rights to know the charges against you, and the evidence against you, and the other inalienable rights of citizenship, considered "radical" ideas, "dangerous" ideas.

Under Canadian law, being on the UN no-fly list makes it illegal for Abdelrazik to work or for anyone to give him money.

Does that include the Canadian state when it is successfully sued for denying him his rights as a Canadian citizen under successive Liberal and Conservative governments?

Taking up space

That's the purpose of putting this up. I want to move some older posts down the line.

Huh. So I go to YouTube to find something to post and there's all this Michael Jackson stuff up. I'd heard earlier (at the liquor store at Gage n' Barton) that somebody had died and this young woman was saying how sad she was about it. I put two and two together. Dead at fifty. I remember that television special that showed how screwed up he was, in one part he excitedly showed the interviewer an imitation Egyptian sarcophagus that he was buying and the interview asked him: "Is this what you'd like to be buried in?" Jackson giggled nervously; "No!" he said like a little child. Then he added: "I'm not going to die. I'm going to live forever!" as if he meant it.

They got some exercise jungle-gym equipment at the park around the corner. A project by Ontario's "Participaction." I must say, some of the kids in this neighbourhood could use it. In other park news, the water-jets are up at the park on Birch Street and the little fellow got soaked in 'em.

Now, to embed two interesting YouTube links:

Actually, craziness aside, this mellowing head-banger respects Michael Jackson for his obvious gigantic talent. Poor S.O.B.

Okay ... Marlon Brando on Dick Cavett:

Good Article on Context for Iran Election

By Jim Miles at Znet.org: "Long on Rhetoric, Short on Memory."

There is a combination of selective memory and selective interpretation of events when the U.S. looks at its own history. Either through media manipulation, or through the rhetoric of ‘exceptionalism', the western view of Iran lacks perspective on both the history of the United States, that of Iran, and of the interactions between the two.

Sing it While You Can Kids ...

It goes by fast. (But I suspect you already knew that.)



And I was reminded about this song last night:



And now have a nice day.

Good Editorial by Murray Dobbin

Murray Dobbin has never been one to mince words. Here's an excellent essay about the epic failure of neoliberalism and our need for major changes starting yesterday:

"Imagine Prosperity Without Growth"

“There is no alternative.” Really? There bloody well better be or we are all doomed. “Government is the problem, not the solution?” The banks and the CEOs of the transnationals who reveled in this slogan would now disagree. And what about the cause of the evil deficits -- governments “spending like drunken sailors?” Now Bay Street believes that government isn’t nearly drunk enough. And the demand that we “run government like a business?” Just which bankrupt, crooked, reckless business would that be?

The magnitude of the moral crisis of the political right is staggering. The greed, dishonesty, hubris and psychopathic disregard for the public good renders the whole business elite utterly unfit to pronounce on anything -- not even on the economy, but certainly not democracy or how we run our collective affairs.