An open letter to President Obama:
Why did you bail
out the banks, make them bigger, allow huge bonuses to continue, put a
moratorium on foreclosure and not prosecute one executive from a major
bank?
Why did you reappoint former GWB appointees such as
Bernake and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates? Even if it was only for
appearances sake, why didn't you change the positions to bring in your
own people?
Why do you keep appointing conservatives and blue
dog democrats when you ran on a very progressive platform? e.g. Economic Advisor Robert Rubin, Chief of Staff Rahm
Emanuel, proposed Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.
Thank you for taking water
boarding out of the CIA's playbook but why did you allow rendition to
continue where everyone knows that torture continues under CIA
supervision? For that matter, why weren't black sites closed down?
Why did your administration go to great lengths to
stop prosecution of former Bush executives both inside and outside the
country? On another note, how was it possible that not one low level
government official was prosecuted for torture where the detainees died
at the hand of their torturers? Correction, why was the only CIA
official charged was John Kiriakou? — who didn't torture anyone.
After you promised to usher in a new era of
transparency and accountability, why has your administration
relentlessly prosecuting whistleblowers?
Why do you keep renewing the Patriot Act when you said you wouldn't? Why do you continue with warrantless wiretapping when you said you wouldn't?
Where is the accountability and transparency that you said you would usher in?
Why do you continue to terrorize people worldwide with drone strikes knowing full well it doesn't make America safer? Why do you insist on keeping the ability to apprehend American citizens on American soil and detain them indefinitely, especially in light of your statement that you will never invoke that law?
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I've saved a collection of comment from various sites that I found be more insightful and persuasive than my own:
V4Vendeta's comment on
America to Give Afghanistan a Fleet of Drones:
Obama
has done an amazing job... selling the idea that his drone warfare is
actually "humanitarian" and "compassionate" because it spares US troops
from having to actually go into combat and risk being injured or killed.
The problem with this spin job is that it is the height of tyranny
for a US president to decide who lives or dies based on his say alone.
What kind of nation have we become where the president can order the
termination of even US citizens without any oversight whatsoever? It
makes a mockery of the notion we are a nation of laws.
The president feels he can order the assassination of US citizens or
imprison them indefinitely without any judicial oversight and the
Congress concurs (even though they weren't consulted). We have entered a
dangerous new stage in crony capitalism where no opposition to
unbridled corruption will be tolerated. In fact, under the current
"legal" framework now in place, Obama could claim that an internet post
is "aiding and abetting" the enemy because it exposes criminality and he
could order the arrest and incarceration of the author without telling
his/her family members or anyone else. He also doesn't have to allow
the person access to a lawyer and can torture the "suspect." The worse
that can happen is a slap on the wrist for the offending authorities if
that.
We are essentially now living in a 1984-style police state with a
video camera on every corner and every single piece of communication
sent is monitored. You can be assassinated on the presidents say and
even your family can assassinated for no other reason than being related
to you. If the president decides to spare your life you can be
indefinitely detained without any legal recourse and tortured. It's
scary...
George Washington's comment on
Noam Chomsky blasts Obama: He has no moral center:
Yes. Thank you, Professor Chomsky. Let's be candid for a change on the most
obvious aspects of Obama's presidency: Obama is a staunch supporter of every
facet of 21st Century American empire.He supports the sell-off (at fire sale prices) of public goods to
transnational corporations. He supports the privatization of govt.
He supports the Walmartization of the U.S. economy. He supports the
FoxNewsification of journalism and the triumph of free market fundamentalist
dogma (and religious fundamentalist dogma) over science.
He supports the dismantling and destruction of public education.
He supports energy extraction and economic growth even if it means ecocide
and planetary ruin.
He supports the American Exceptionalist packaging and perpetuation of the
phony "war on terror" in the Middle East.
He supports the pillaging of foreign countries using U.S.
military against helpless civilians, all for the purposes of stealing natural
resources (and labor) on behalf of transnational energy companies and closing
more deals with the arms merchants and chemical companies that control Washington.
He supports increased domestic surveillance and suspension of habeas corpus
at home. He cheerleads the witch hunt against govt and corporate
whistleblowers, encouraging greater secrecy and lawlessness by govt officials. He
supports what the military is doing at Guantanamo.
He endorses a future in which U.S.
citizens can be whisked away by military police and held indefinitely in
solitary confinement with no access to attorneys and no due process of any
kind.
Obama is a transnational corporatist in everything related to labor policy,
trade, the environment, and foreign policy. His presidency is a model of how to
use federal military and police powers to reinforce the power of global
business elites.
Griffon's comment from
Medical marijuana proprietor gets 10-year prison sentence:
"I'm asking for an explanation of your words, not an excerpt of
someone else'."
No, your first statement was to obama's effectiveness during his
first three years in office:
"How do you figure that? According to a recent FBI
Uniform Crime Report, Marijuana arrests were down 11% during President Obama's
first three years in office
I provided sourced facts that contradicted your implied post that obama's
policy was not the destructive and vindictive mess that it obviously is; with
obama's full malice aforethought as reflected in his chosen appointments.
Now, apparently, you've switched your question to wondering why I hold obama
voters responsible for their continued support of a lying,
bush-doctrinaire, Wall St.-suck, drone-bombing, NDAA-signing,war-expanding, spying-expanding, War-criminal-coddling,
Kill-List-assembling, Cluster-bomb-advocating, Monsanto-lackey-appointing,
Torture-defending, BP-colluding, Whistleblower-persecuting,
Transparency-scuttling, Public-Option-killing, Due-Process-denying,
Lobbyist-fellating, weaselly sack of venal bullsh*t.
The point is that supposedly thinking voters didn't unilaterally reject both
obama and the democratic party for offering such a Quisling bastard to get a
second term.
The contempt with which I hold the obama voter is higher since, after 8 f*cking
years of bush, (and four more of a neocon obama) you spineless submissive sh*ts
should have known better; should have admitted to yourselves what was
happening before your eyes. Instead, you passively accepted that the machine
held sway and you were powerless to say "enough."
I must have missed the coercive and armed paramilitary thugs who no-doubt
held guns to the heads of voters forcing them to proactively select the lying neocon Coward-in-Chief for anotherdisastrous four years. Those apparent armed threats weren't at my
polling station.
The obama voters should have rejected obama right after his capitulation to block War Crimes trials, or after his expansion of bush's WoT,
or after obama's expansion of Domestic Spying, or after obama's TSA program, or
after obama's killing of the Public Option in a backroom deal with the pharms
and hospital lobbies, or after obama's execution of American Citizens without
due process, judicial oversight or even charges, or after obama's Indefinite
Detention program.....etc.
Instead, they slavishly did what they were told by the MSM; capitulated to a
gamed system rather than speak up for the baldly obvious right-and-wrong of the
current Ratchet
Effect/Duopoly (link).
Third party voters, on the other hand, aren't stupid enough to interminably
keep playing the electoral Three-Card-Monte game, run entirely by two
corporate-owned party machines, and myopically expect a different outcome.
They
know full well that the "First
Past the Post"(link) system guarantees that the moneyed interests will
control representation and policy.
The third-party+ advocates realize this disparity and vigorously reject a gamed and broken system that incessantly hands power to the closest
thing America has to insurgent dictatorships: Corporations.
Both parties routinely abdicate their responsibility to the will of the people and instead venally barter away the people's will to
entities that hold no allegiance to any nation, Constitution or system of moral
authority. Corporations who buy our leaders, buy our representatives, count our
votes without oversight or confirmation, taint our food and foul our water and
air, sicken our workers and benefit from their deaths. The corporations'
allegiance is to only money; nothing else.
The democrats and republicans serve these cancers over their electorate: the
People.
obama chose the Corporate Cancer over the health and welfare of the People
in a backroom meeting with the hospital and pharma lobbies to kill the Public
Option and pharma price negotiations, thereby surrendering the People's will
(some 75%+ of which favored joining the rest of the world in adopting Universal
Healthcare,) to a Corporate Dictatorship; a Cancer that directly caused the
healthcare crisis to begin with.
Both failed parties passed Torture-as-Official State Policy,
Assassination of American Citizens without Due Process or Judicial Oversight,
Corporate Welfare, a Bloated Security State, a Bloated Pentagon, Detention
without Trial, War Crimes as State Policy, Unilateral Drone Murder,
Deregulation of the Disastrous Banking Industry,.....the list is long, quite
obscene and absolutely futile to continue as standard procedure.
Together, the two failed parties have facilitated one of the greatest economic failures in US
history; with no substantive indictments or prosecutions of Wall St. and Bankster fraud, allowing the
thieves to walk away, scot-free, with billions.
And the obama-party submissives sucked it up and passively asked for more
rather than holding their "party" to account. The party submissives
sat on their hands for four long years making pathetic apologist excuses for
obama's atrocities, then declared "victory" for putting a
Drone-murdering lobbyist-fellating, corporatist psycho back in office.
"You have to understand, most of these people are
not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly
dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."
~Morpheus
