OBAMA THE BAD?

The Apostle Paul wrote that we should obey and respect the government officials that are put over us. Further, some Christian commentators have stated we need to respect the man in the office of the president and be respectful and obedient to the presidency.

A caller on a Christian talk show reminded us, however, that were it not for a few stout- hearted rebellious English subjects, there would be no The United States of America and we would still be subjects living under the rule of the unjust king of England.

The rebellion stirrings in this country , i.e. tea parties, town hall disruptions, are manifestations of the intense dissatisfaction of the governed peoples.

Pat Buchanan recently opined that President Obama is not only losing not only the philosophical ‘far right”, but the”center” of the country as well. “That this is not the first time that the liberals have misread America” and by imposing the will of a few on the majority, they risk their favored position over the governed. The same can be said about the neocons who formed a cabal in the Republican party and took this country in a direction not favored by the Centerists. Witness the 2008 election that elected the ‘Obamas’ not because they agreed with the liberals, but they strongly disagreed with the neocon president and Republican candidate.

Throwing gasoline on smoldering embers, Harry Reid depicted the town hall protesters as “mobs, thugs and right- wing extremists” Mrs. Pelosi called the protesters ‘nazis and un-American”

From the Declaration of Independence: ” . . . That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

Dave Lindoff’s article on Counterpunch.com, 8.20.09:

“Barack Obama offers the hope of bringing that era of debilitating confusion to an end.

Not because he is the Great Black Hope of progressives, but because he has taken the concept of selling out to corporate interests and compromising with Republicans to such remarkable heights that progressives hopefully can no longer be confused about the irretrievably corrupted nature of the Democratic Party.

On virtually every issue of importance, President Obama has sided with corporate interests and the wealthy.

On the issue of war and peace, he has sided with the military-industrial complex, with a policy of permanent occupation of Iraq and endless war in Afghanistan, as well as continued funding of the country’s colossal armory of death, from strategic missiles and submarines to aircraft-carrier-group armadas to high-tech fighter squadrons and space weaponry.

On civil liberties, he has sided with the police state, supporting continuation of the Bush/Cheney administration’s insidious National Security Agency spying program, defended military spying within the US, and refused to prosecute obvious abuses by the prior administration.

On torture, the Obama administration is continuing the imprisonment and torture of captives in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world at Bagram Air Base and, probably, at other secret sites, and instead of closing Guantanamo as promised, is looking into transferring that hellhole of torture and abuse to one or several sites in the mainland US.

Health care reform has become a sad joke, with the emerging “reform” bill looking for all the world like the Rube Goldberg creation of the Clinton era that properly went down in flames. Instead of taking on the insurance industry, the hospital companies and the pharmaceutical industry and other parts of the profit-making medical-industrial complex, Obama cut deals with all of them behind closed doors, assuring that their profits would be left untouched, and that they could essentially write their own “reform” bill through the offices of bought-and-paid members of Congress like Senator Max Baucus. Obama and his congressional allies carefully kept any discussion of the single-payer idea—essentially Medicare for all, and the approach that even Obama himself admits would be cheaper and more universal—out of sight and off the table.

Finally, there’s economy and banking reform. Here Obama didn’t even make a pretense of taking a progressive approach. There is a stimulus program, but half of it was in the form of tax cuts—token for the poor and middle class and significant for the rich and for businesses, and half in the form of federal grants, often for unneeded projects like roads and road repair which go to some of the higher paid members of the working class, leaving the poor and the ununionized with no job help. Meanwhile, bankers were the recipients of trillions of dollars in bailout assistance, while nothing was done to break up the huge mega-bank holding companies that brought on the financial and economic crisis in the first place. Instead of picking economic advisers and bank regulators from the many talented system critics like Nobelists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, Obama picked veterans of the Bush/Cheney administration, and Wall Street shills like Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner"

With Love and Kindness,

THE HATMAN