THE MEDIA ISSUE: VOLUME 97, ISSUE 119
FIRST THEY CAME FOR ACORN
by Peter Dreier, Common Dreams




First Big Business, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs, the Religious Right, the Wall Street Journal, Mitch McConnell, and Karl Rove came for ACORN, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not ACORN.

Then they came for SEIU, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not SEIU.

Then they came for the Apollo Alliance, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the Apollo Alliance.

Then they came for the Center for American Progress, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the Center for American Progress.

Then they came for the Sierra Club, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the Sierra Club.

Then they came for the National Organization for Women, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the National Organization for Women.

Then they came for the other community organizers, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not community organizers.

Then they came for AFSCME, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not AFSCME.

Then they came for the National Council of La Raza, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the National Council of La Raza.

Then they came for the NAACP, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the NAACP.

Then they came for the ACLU, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the ACLU.

Then they came for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Then they came for the National Council of Churches, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the National Council of Churches.

Then they came for the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

Then they came for the AARP, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the AARP.

Then they came for the Teamsters, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not Teamsters.

Then they came for the Catholic Worker, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the Catholic Worker.

Then they came for UNITE HERE, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not UNITE HERE.

Then they came for the Immigrant Solidarity Network, and, the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the Immigrant Solidarity Network.

Then they came for the National Education Association, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the National Education Association.

Then they came for the U.S. Student Association, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the U.S. Student Association.

Then they came for the American Association of University Professors, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the American Association of University Professors

Then Big Business, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs, the Religious Right, the Wall Street Journal, Mitch McConnell, and Karl Rove came for the Democrats -- and there was no one left to speak out for the Democrats.

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THE REAL POLITIK EDITION: ISSUE 96, VOLUME 118
GOMORRAH
by Malik Isasis



Fox News' obsession with Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has reached pornographic levels. ACORN is an umbrella of community based organizations that works with the poor--in housing, voter registration and employment. So, why does Fox News hate ACORN?

ACORN is responsible for voter registration, which mostly benefits the Democratic Party, so if they discredit and take down ACORN, they cripple voter registration efforts, and housing support for the poor. Every show, everyday since President Obama's inauguration, Fox News has gotten its rocks off, trying to bring down ACORN on flimsy voter registration charges, portraying ACORN as a systemic, corrupt organization.

It seemed they have hit pay dirt when some "independent filmmakers" dressed for Halloween as pimp and ho, went into several offices from Baltimore to New York in what seemed like entrapment. Here's CNN's reporting. Have a gander:



Now here is how Fox News covered the story. Have a gander:



For the past several weeks Fox News has saturated the public airwaves with ACORN corruption, demanding politicians to revoke any funds it gives to the organization. The Republican Party are going along for the ride as if they had nothing to do with their political hit job on the community organization, now calling for an independent prosecutor. Funny, they strongly oppose an independent prosecutor for Bush's war crimes, but are gun-ho for prosecuting a community-based organization.

THE RUB

Fox News creates its own reality, literally, and other corporate media networks usually follow along, using Fox's talking points in which to frame an issue. The danger to this democracy is the contempt Fox News shows toward democracy. Fox News has no regard for integrity, or truth. They are clearly, and symptomatically--make that pathologically driven to destroy the Democratic Party, labor unions, teacher unions, and what little political choice we have.

Where was Fox News six years ago when $9 BILLION dollars, simply disappeared? Corporate contractors with no-bid contracts were making money hand over fist. In my blog Who's Washing the Money? I stated, $11 billion in tax-dollars lost in 3 years in governmental no-bid contracts in New Orleans and Baghdad reconstruction. The loss is not stagnant, Bush is financing the Iraq Occupation and the conflict in Afghanistan through supplemental funding, and the money doesn’t count toward the country’s deficit, which is why it is supplemental and in the past, used sparingly.

Fox News didn't make a peep about it, other corporate news organizations mentioned it but didn't give the story adequate coverage. Maybe because Fox didn't make a big deal of it. Was it because the president was a Republican? Did Fox News organize viewers to march on the National Mall demanding their country back? What about their million dollar entertainers and news readers, did they raise hell about the deficit-spending then? I think the answer is clear.

Dateline, September 1, 2009. It is reported that security contractors in Afghanistan have hazing rituals at the very least boarding on homoerotic, where naked security contractors (all male) poured alcohol down one another backs and drinking the run off from one another asses. Here take a gander:



The ArmorGroup/Wackenhut government contractor is worth $180 million dollars. Where was Fox News' outrage?

It is clear Fox News' agenda is schilling for corporate interests. They can have one position one day, and turn on that same position when it is no longer useful. All of their employees get paid handsomely, which is why they lie with glee, and abandonment.

They are truly soulless in their quest to usher in their brand of fascism.

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THE REAL POLITIK EDITION: ISSUE 95, VOLUME 118
TRUE BELIEVERS
CALLING PRESIDENT OBAMA EVERYTHING BUT A NIGGER



The rapid cycling Glenn Beck, dope feign Rush Limbaugh and the whole fifth column of insanity REALLY would like to call Obama a nigger, but they can’t so they settle for Black-man-child, Magical Negro, Communist, Socialist, Hitler, Satan, Alien, Undocumented Worker, and Kenyan (Really, a Kenyan?). I think they should go ahead and man-up and call the president a nigger and get it over with.

It is always interesting to see corporate media twist themselves into pretzels to give the white supremacists of the Republican Party the benefit of the doubt, regardless of the evidence that once again Black folks have become the Straw Man for all that is wrong with America

Fox News’ corporate cymbal monkey Glenn Beck founded the 9-12 Project six months ago, with the intent of capturing the feelings of America after September 11, 2001—remember the feelings of rage that got us into two wars and two occupations? The high anxiety, which allowed the Bush Administration to hijack the constitution to wipe their shitty asses? That feeling? Over the recent September 11, 2001 anniversary approximately seventy thousand protesters from the reptilian leaning Tea Bag organizations mustered on the National Mall of Washington D.C. to express their vitriol for the Obama presidency.



After former President Jimmy Carter called, correctly the Tea Baggers' criticism of President Obama white supremacy, the rightwing worked themselves into a lather—because being called a racist, is far worst than actually being one. Take a look:



The Republican machine rolled out their Black Face clown, Chairman of the Republican National Committee like Michael Steele, to admonish former President Carter’s statements.

“Characterizing American's disapproval of President Obama's policies as being based on race is an outrage and a troubling sign about the lengths Democrats will go to disparage all who disagree with them,” Steel said in dramatic fashion. I get the feeling that Steele is fighting for his job and would say anything to keep his white handlers at bay—to prove his fidelity. He is the worst kind of Uncle Tom, the one in which the African proverb about the tree and ax fits perfectly.


When the axe came into the forest, the trees said, “The handle is one of us.”

THE MISUNDERSTANDING

Here’s Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck as documented by Media Matters.



Okay, so: where is the outrage by the corporate media? Nowhere right? However, call one of these idiots a white supremacist or racist, and Blacks are stuck with playing the “race card”. This is the sickness of white supremacy in this country. Neely Fuller, Jr., author and activist established in his book, The United Independent Compensatory Code/System/Concept the four basic stages of racism (white supremacy):

1. Establishment of white supremacy
2. Maintenance of white supremacy
3. Expansion of white supremacy
4. Refinement of white supremacy

The upside down world, or parallel universe the corporate media creates is to perpetuate the four basic stages of white supremacy. Corporate media is not interested in the redress of injustice; rather it turns the concept inside out and uses it as a rallying cry for the 33% of the population who are True Believers, those who just may fire the loaded gun they bring to an Obama event.

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WATER
NEW THINKING EDITION: ISSUE 94, VOLUME 117
by Michael Pritchard, TED



Too much of the world lacks access to clean drinking water. Engineer Michael Pritchard did something about it -- inventing the portable Lifesaver filter, which can make the most revolting water drinkable in seconds. An amazing demo from TEDGlobal 2009. With cutting-edge nanotech, Michael Pritchard's Lifesaver water-purification bottle could revolutionize water-delivery systems in disaster-stricken areas around the globe.

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THE REAL POLITIK EDITION: ISSUE 93, VOLUME 116
AFTER OBAMA
by David Michael Green, Common Dreams



Eight months into it, it now seems pretty clear that the Obama administration is finished.

There were some of us -- indeed, many of us, myself included -- who thought there was a possibility that Barack Obama might seize this moment of American crisis, twinned with the complete failure for all to see of the regressive agenda, to become the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt.

Many think that was a naïve position from the get-go. I disagree. Not only do I believe that it was a legitimate possibility, I would argue that it was the logical choice even just from the narrow perspective of Obama's personal fortunes. The president is every day committing political suicide by a thousand cuts because he chose not to take that track.

That's certainly his prerogative, and at this point I wish him all the worst of luck in whatever comes next. Since I never assumed he would be a progressive once elected, any bitterness that I feel is not rooted in his failure to become the new FDR. However, I am irate that, in domain after domain, President Obama has become the personification of the very Bush administration policies that Candidate Obama so roundly criticized. And I feel deep hostility toward him about the betrayal of legions of voters -- especially the young -- who believed his message of hope and thought they were getting a president on their side, not Wall Street's.

More on that in another column. Right now, the question is what comes next? The Obama presidency is probably already toast, though of course anything can happen in three or seven years. But he is on a crash course for a major clock cleaning and, what's worse, he doesn't seem to have it remotely within him to seize history by the horns and steer that bull in his preferred direction. Indeed, near as I can tell, he doesn't even have a preferred direction.

Obama was complete fool if he ever believed for a moment that his campfire kumbaya act was going to bring the right along behind him. Even s'mores wouldn't have helped. These foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics have completely lost all sense and proportion, and were bound to viscerally hate any president left of Cheney, let alone some black guy in their white house. Meanwhile, centrist voters in this country seem pretty much only to care about taxes and spending, and so he's lost them, too, without the slightest rhetorical fight in his own defense. And he's blown off a solid progressive base by spitting in their eyes at every imaginable opportunity, beginning with the formation of his cabinet, ranging through every policy decision from civil rights to civil liberties to foreign policy to healthcare, and culminating with his choice not to even mobilize his email database in support of his policies.

So if he's lost the left, right and center, just who does he think is going to be clamoring to give him a second term three years from now, especially if the economy remains lousy for most people in the country, as it's likely to do regardless of GDP or Dow Jones growth?

There is the possibility that Obama could change course significantly, just as Bill Clinton did in 1995, following the mid-term election in which his most astute political stewardship managed to turn both houses of Congress over to the Republican Party. But Clinton turned to the right and became just a less snarly version of the Republicans, while Obama is already there. I don't really think he could conceivably turn further rightward at this point, and I don't think he has anywhere near the guts to turn to the left and do what he should have done in the first place.

What all this suggests to me is that Obama and his party will manage by 2012 to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and return the GOP -- and probably an even nastier version of it than the Bush-Cheney junta, at that -- to power. It suggests that the Democrats, who were riding high six months ago over an all but destroyed Republican Party, will be switching places with them within three years time, if not sooner -- and all because of their own cowardice, corruption and ineptitude. This outcome is hardly inevitable, but it is fast approaching. Looking out over the horizon, I see five key factors most likely to effect the health and longevity of the Obama administration, and not one of them looks positive.

The eight-hundred pound gorilla rummaging around in the kitchen right now is the economy. Indeed, this factor alone could readily swamp the combined effect of all the others, particularly if it swings dramatically in one direction or another. My guess, as a non-economist (which, of course, only means that I have a better shot at an accurate prediction than the economists do), is that the economy will exhibit some substantial signs of growth over the next three years. But I suspect the recovery will be tepid, even according to establishment measures such as GDP growth or the state of the Dow. More importantly, I strongly suspect that this will be another jobless recovery, like the last ones we've had, and that the new mean standard of living for the middle class will be pretty mean indeed, significantly diminished compared to what people were already struggling to hold on to when the Great Recession began. Personally, I think if American history teaches us anything at all about presidential elections, it is that for an incumbent president this is more or less the worst possible scenario imaginable upon which to go asking the public to punch his ticket again. Americans vote their pocketbook, and that alone is likely to be the kiss of death for Obama's second term aspirations.

Meanwhile, of course, he's also chosen to put healthcare reform on the table as the signature legislative initiative probably of his entire presidency. That's fine, but watching him in action I sometimes wonder if this clown really and actually wants a second term. I mean, if you had asked me in January, "How could Obama bungle this program most thoroughly?", I would have written a prescription that varies little from what we've observed over the last eight months: Don't frame the issue, but instead let the radical right backed by greedy industry monsters do it, on the worst possible terms for you. And to you. Don't fight back when they say the most outrageous things about your plan. In fact, don't even have a plan. Let Congress do it. Better yet, let the by-far-and-away-minority party have an equal voice in the proceedings, even if they ultimately won't vote for the bill under any circumstances, and even while they're running around trashing it and you in the most egregious terms. Have these savages negotiate with a small group of right-wing Democrats, all of them major recipients of industry campaign donations. Blow off your base completely. Cut secret sweetheart deals with the Big Pharma and Big Insurance corporate vampires. Build a communications strategy around a series of hapless press conferences and town hall meetings, waiting until it's too late to give a major speech on the issue. Set a timetable for action and then let it slip. Indicate what you want in the bill but then be completely unclear about whether you necessarily require those things. Travel all over the world doing foreign policy meet-and-greets. Go on vacation in the heat of the battle. Rinse and repeat.

Altogether, it's an astonishingly perfect recipe for getting rolled, so much so that I'm not the first person to have wondered out loud if that was actually the president's intention all along. Look at this freaking fool. Now look at the guy who ran a letter-perfect, disciplined, textbook, insurgent, victorious campaign for the White House. Can they possibly be the same person? And, since they obviously are, is there possibly another explanation for this disaster besides an intentional boot? I dunno. But what I do know is this. Obama's very best-case scenario for healthcare legislation right now represents a ton of lost votes in 2010 and 2012. And the worse that scenario gets, the worse he and his party do. But even a ‘success' in the months ahead will produce a tepid bill, a mistrustful public, an inflamed and unanswered radical right, and a mealy-mouthed new government program that doesn't even begin to go online until 2013. A real vote-getter that, eh?

Which brings us to a third major electoral liability for Obama. Human beings, by and large, like to be led. They like their leaders to inspire their confidence -- even when doing so takes the form of the most fantastically shallow dress-up kind of blowhard buffonery, à la George W. Bush -- so that they don't have to think too much about how little personal confidence they themselves actually possess. Obama is the complete antithesis of this model of the presidency. He is Harry Reid's incontinent grandmother as president. He is Neville Chamberlain's squirrely little nephew knocking shit over in the Oval Office while he plays "Mr. President", in-between episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants. He is a bowl of Jell-O. That someone forgot to put in the fridge. He exhibits no competence as a chief executive. He inspires no confidence as a national leader. And, increasingly, his credibility is coming into question. Who wants to vote for that?

A related problem is that he loves to flash that big toothy grin of his right before his venomous adversaries knock his choppers back into his head. I'm trying to imagine what a wimpier president would look like, and having a very hard time coming up with an answer. I'm trying to imagine how the regressive right could possibly bathe their country's president in a more acidic pool of vitriol, and I'm having a difficult time topping their assertions that he's out to kill the elderly while simultaneously indoctrinating grade-schoolers into the ranks of the Revolutionary Spartacist League. I'm trying to conceive of how vacant a White House could possibly be of any whiff of push-back against these assaults, and I can't quite envision it. Maybe if they went out and did some real scandals and filmed it all as a gift for the GOP? Perhaps they could dig up Vince Foster's body and murder him all over again, this time on video? Or they could hire Ken Starr to just run amok in the White House for a few years, looking for anything remotely juicy? But could Obama's Keystone Kops even do a scandal properly? I'm not sure, but I'm pretty confident the public is losing trust in this guy as their Big Daddy Protector. Who in America would vote for this eunuch to be in charge of keeping their little suburban Happy Meal-stuffed brats safe from tawny evil-doers with bad intentions?

As if all that weren't enough, Obama is probably also sitting on several national security powder kegs - including Guantánamo, which he is unlikely to close; Iraq, which he is unlikely to leave; and Afghanistan, which he is unlikely to win. The latter in particular has now become his war, and lately it is smelling a lot like Vietnam, circa 1964. An decades-long struggle against a popular nationalist adversary. Endless calls from the Pentagon for more troops. Incredibly inhospitable terrain for fighting a war. An American-made puppet government hated for its corruption and for its gross incompetence at every task other than raw predation. Mmmm-mmm. What a yummy stew. Haven't dined on that fine cuisine since 1975. And what another great vote-getter to add to this sorry list, eh?

Put it all together and it's pretty hard to see how Obama gets a second term. Which can mean only one thing: We're looking at a Romney or a Palin or some sort of similar monster as the next president, despite the fact that their party was absolutely loathed only a year ago, and actually still is today. It won't matter. People will be voting against the incumbent, not for any candidate, and that will leave only one viable choice, especially for centrist and right-wing voters. Whoever wins the Republican nomination will be the next president, crushing Obama in the general election (assuming he survives the Democratic primaries). And that's a particularly scary notion, since the party's voting base who will make that choice in the Republican primaries is the same crowd you've seen featured all this summer at town hall meetings. Olympia Snowe is not going to be the Republican nominee in 2012. Know what I mean?

So the question then becomes, what next? What happens after Obama?

I see two possible general paths going forth from that point -- one bad, and one worse. The bad path would involve a frustrated but essentially beaten-into-submission public oscillating between incompetent Republican and Democratic administrations, turning one after the other out of office -- not on ideological grounds, but instead seeking any change that has the possibility of stanching the empire's hemorrhaging wounds. This would look a fair bit like Japan or Britain does today. The former just replaced its government and the latter will likely do so next spring. But I don't think either of these major party shifts are really ideological in nature, and I don't think either new government is likely to be hugely different from the one it succeeded.

But Americans seem to me especially piggish critters these days, and the benign model that is sufficient to placate disgruntled citizens of long-lost empires may not suffice to soothe the savage soul of Yanquis still deep in the process of watching theirs crumble around their feet. That moves us from the bad path to the worse. Given what the American public is capable of happily countenancing during relatively flush times (can you say "Reagan"? "Bush"?), imagine what could happen when spoiled Baby Boomers go to the polls under conditions approaching the 1930s.

Such a crisis could conceivably entail a sharp turn to the left, and in every rational country certainly would. But this is America. We pretty much don't go anywhere near socialism, at least not overtly, and in any given decade -- especially the recent ones -- we're lucky to get away with anything less than creeping fascism. Moreover, elections are almost always reactions to the status quo. Since Obama is ridiculously -- but nevertheless widely -- perceived as a liberal, the reaction is all the more likely to involve a sharp turn to the right in response.

Under this scenario, anything portside of Torquemada would be buried alive if not annihilated, and the next regime would likely be one that could make Dick Cheney shudder. And that's the happy side of the equation. If history is any guide, a nifty (not so) little war could only be right around the corner, for the helpful purpose of jump-starting the economy, crushing the domestic opposition, and distracting the public from that pesky nuisance once affectionately referred to as ‘reality'.

I don't want to lay odds on which of these outcomes is the more likely, but I feel pretty confident, I'm sad to say, that any happier scenario is considerably less likely than either of these. For a lot of reasons, America's near-term future looks bleak to me, and this country -- which already has a remarkable tendency to make dangerously foolish and sickeningly selfish political choices -- is altogether too likely to do something that would make the Bush years look like a scene from a Norman Rockwell canvas by comparison.

This tragedy, if it comes, will have many sires who share responsibility for driving America from Republican red to fascist black. But on that list must certainly be included the powder blue of the effete Obama administration that came in between.

Rahm Emanuel once famously averred that "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

I don't really believe that corporate-controlled fascism is what he had in mind when he said that.

But, who knows? Maybe that's exactly what he was thinking.
Or -- perhaps most likely of all -- maybe nobody at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is doing much thinking whatsoever these days.

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MJ DAY
American Absurdism
by Malik Isasis



Spike Lee inspired me to become a filmmaker when I was sixteen. So, when he decided to throw a birthday party for Michael Jackson, in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, I had to pack up my film camera and record the goings on.

It was both fun and disturbing the deification of Michael Jackson, a man, who reminds me of Benjamin Buttons, aging backwards. He was a child genius who was an old soul, who became a man, with the soul of a child.

If we can only get people to muster like this for healthcare.

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THE REAL POLITIK EDITION: ISSUE 92, VOLUME 116
Leaving Obamaland
by Bruce A. Dixon, Black Agenda Report



Democrats could accomplish nothing during the Bush years, they told us, for the first six years because they were a minority, and during the last two because Republicans could filibuster. Now, with both houses of congress, a filibuster-proof senate majority and a "transformative leader" in the White House Democrats can only continue the wars, the privatizations, the torture, cover-ups and kidnapping. In power, Obama and Democrats can bail out Wall Street but not homeowners; they cannot accomplish anything voters want, like universal health care, Medicare For All. Some Democratic activists are sobering up, looking around, and heading for the exits.

Somewhere there's a president who stands up for homeowners facing bankruptcy and eviction. Somewhere there is a transformative leader who fights to deliver hope, universal health care and equal rights for everybody, who will bring the troops home from Iraq and other places and who is a relentless foe of Wall Street's excesses. This president's very career is a repudiation of racism, ancient injustice and unearned privilege. Of course, that guy is not the president of the U.S. He's the president of an imaginary realm we call Obamaland.

In Obamaland, the president never keeps the truth from us except to deprive the nation's enemies of more bad things to say about us, because he's so busy looking forward. Crimes maybe, are in the past, hope is in the future, right? In Obamaland the president isn't to blame if the wars continue and the troops don't come home, and the government keeps kidnapping and torturing people --- he didn't exactly say all that would stop right away if at all anyhow, did he, really? In Obamaland,all this can be overlooked or forgiven, or at least put off till Democrats somehow obtain a bigger advantage than a mere crushing majority in the House, sixty votes in the Senate, and a new president.

And in Obamaland, even though the president told us to judge his first term on whether he delivers effective, affordable health care to millions of Americans including the uninsured, it's not the president's fault if he appears to moonwalk away from a health care bill to a health insurance bill, from single payer to a public option, to insurance co-ops, and to a plan that doesn't cover the uninsured till 2013.

We could go on for quite a while --- and actually we have been for several years now, about how this mystical, magical place called Obamaland was conceived and constructed, and marketed as the answer to the abuses of the Bush years.

Back in June of 2003, when Glen Ford and I introduced Barack Obama to our audience at Black Commentator, he was a Democratic primary election candidate for the US Senate in Illinois. Candidate Obama, we noted at the time, seemed to be playing a double game. He offered progressive, black and antiwar constituencies a hook just big enough to hang their hopes on, while through his affiliation with the right-wing Democratic Leadership Council, Obama actively courted the support of the full range of corporate America, from the energy, insurance, military contractors and financial sectors to the airlines and Wall Street. This video clip of a much longer interview with BAR executive editor Glen Ford explains how we discovered Obama's affiliation with the Democratic Leadership Council, along with his apparent repudiation of his previous criticism of the Iraq war in the wake of Bush's declaration that Iraq was a “Mission Accomplished.”

Being named one of the DLC's “100 To Watch” as Obama was in 2003 signifies that a candidate has been extensively vetted by a broad range of corporate interests as completely trustworthy and utterly loyal to their agendas. Having obtained the indelible seal of approval from Wall Street, insurance companies, telecoms, military contractors, airlines and the like who sit on the DLC's board, denying it all was the safe and sensible, if dishonest thing to do, and Obama did just that. He claimed the DLC had conferred this distinction upon him with no advance knowledge on his part, and that he would gladly renounce it, as if such a repudiation could ever be taken seriously.

In the interest of clarifying Barack Obama's place on the political spectrum, we posed three “bright line' questions to him.

1. Do you favor the withdrawal of the United States from NAFTA? Will you in the Senate introduce or sponsor legislation toward that end?

2. Do you favor the adoption of a single payer system of universal health care to extend the availability of quality health care to all persons in this country? Will you in the Senate introduce or sponsor legislation toward that end?

3. Would you have voted against the October 10 congressional resolution allowing the president to use unilateral force against Iraq?

The three questions were chosen with some care. Earlier in his political career, Obama had taken a position forthrightly against NAFTA, had endorsed Single Payer, and had cast himself as an opponent of the war. But in the heat of a contested race for the US Senate in which Obama was absolutely dependent on a large and unified black and brown vote, --- those being the constituencies most opposed to the war and NAFTA, and who would most benefit from Medicare For All, --- and in which he also needed to get all of the antiwar, anti-NAFTA white vote, Obama's answers were visible evidence that he was already moonwalking away from Democratic voters and toward his elite campaign contributors. Instead of sponsoring single payer in the senate, Obama said he favored “universal health care” and would work to get SCHIP funded.

“I favor universal health care for all Americans, and intend to introduce or sponsor legislation toward that end in the U.S. Senate, just as I have at the state level. My campaign is also developing a series of interim proposals – such as an expansion of the successful SCHIP program”

Instead of repealing NAFTA, he said “renegotiation” might be necessary, another position he repeated when convenient in his presidential campaign four years later, and later abandoned altogether.

“...I believe that free trade - when also fair - can benefit workers in both rich and poor nations, I think that the current NAFTA regime lacks the worker and environmental protections that are necessary for the long-term prosperity of both America and its trading partners. I would therefore favor, at minimum, a significant renegotiation of NAFTA and the terms of the President’s fast track authority... "

2003's candidate Obama affirmed, with some qualifications, that he would have opposed the authorization to use force against Iraq.

His answers were larded with weasel words. We knew it, and so did anybody who read our work then, or reads it now, several years later. But they were just enough so that given the entire political situation, we felt we had to endorse Obama's campaign for the US Senate. My colleague Glen Ford calls it an ethical dilemma, but I prefer to believe it was a political one, in which we conducted ourselves as honest journalists. We caught him with his pants down and called him. We posed the bright line questions. Candidate Obama was forced to answer them for the permanent record, a record which indicts President Obama today, and prefigures his conduct on health care, NAFTA, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, government torture and kidnappings, the right to organize unions, his Wall Street bailouts, his endorsement of Bush educational policies and much more. The fact that Obamaland has turned out to be a delusion is no surprise to us, and to many others. It's a reality that dawns upon more and more of us as time goes on.

“So the very best our popular president with whopping majorities in both houses of congress can do is not single payer. It's not universal health care at all, but “health insurance reform” as the president calls it, a bailout for private insurers”

The Democratic Leadership Council is almost irrelevant today, a victim of its own success. It was established in the wake of Jesse Jackson's presidential candidacies in the 1980s, when white, right wing Democrats felt themselves an endangered species. Their goal was to enable Democrats to compete with Republicans for corporate funding by promoting Democrats who were just as pro-corporate as any Republican. By now corporate Democrats are the rule, not the exception, and the career of Barack Obama is the crowning example of the DLC's complete victory in freeing the Democratic party from the wishes of Democratic voters, even if Obama denies the DLC brand itself.



The fight for universal health care has blown away the illusions of many. Though months behind schedule, the Democratic health care legislation appears to be where and what our Democratic president wanted all along.

So the very best our popular president with whopping majorities in both houses of congress can do is not single payer. It's not universal health care at all, but “health insurance reform” as the president calls it, a bailout for private insurers, under which millions will be forced to purchase junk insurance, some with government subsidies funded by Medicare and Medicaid cuts. The president is even open to taxing employer-furnished insurance benefits, a position he ridiculed McCain for during the campaign. Drug prices will remain high thanks to a deal cut with Big Pharma, and the public option, originally conceived as a Medicare-scale government run insurance plan competing with private insurers to drive their costs downward, was thoroughly gutted, eviscerated and watered down before the White House declared it “not essential” to its vision of national health care at all. What remains of a health care bill is what Detroit Rep. John Conyers has called "crappy." But it's what the president wanted all along.

It is evident now that President Obama has simultaneously played both the good cop and the bad cop on health care, using the excuses of Senate and blue dog intransigence and Republican opposition in order to shed provisions of the health care bill the White House did not favor. We all learned in sixth grade civics class about “co-equal branches” of government, but like a lot of things we learned in childhood, the reality is something else. Outside of Obamaland, the president, any president, possesses levers of vast executive power that can be utilized to bring any mere congressman or senator back onto the reservation. The White House, according to California's Lynn Woosley, routinely bares its fangs at junior members of congress who hint at voting against the war budget, but never threatens to depose stubborn liars in the Senate or call to heel the blue dogs of the House, whose careers are literally the handiwork of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

It's morning in America again, and this time a hung over morning. The left, and most of all the black left, is only beginning to rouse itself from the Obamaland stupor and stumble out into daylight. The president after all, is not necessarily an ally in the fight to deliver health care, or education, or halt privatizations, bankruptcies, foreclosures or unjust wars, or most of the other things that need delivering or need stopping. Now progressives and the wide awake are beginning to leave Obamaland in droves, abandoning the automatic stance that the president is an ally in the struggle for peace abroad and justice at home.

We still need medical care for all. Seventy percent of US bankruptcies in 2009 will be from unpayable medical bills. This won't be the first time in our long, history of struggle that the president is not necessarily on our side. As more of us wake up, smell the coffee and head for the exits from Obamaland we know there are plenty of our people still there.

Some are careerists, who have or hope to get jobs or contracts or preserve their livelihoods by toeing the administration line, or at least not being publicly critical of it. It's a tough world, and we can understand their position. All job applications in the administration, after all, demand an applicant show his or her Facebook and MySpace pages, and all internet and other writing of a political or policy nature. Some Obamaphiles are the old black misleadership class. Other Obama supporters are the counterparts of George Bush's fan base, who still believed the man was President Jesus to the very end. But most of those still stuck in Obamaland are only half asleep. Until more of them are awakened, we won't stop the wars or the torture or the kidnappings or the creeeping privatization of education and everything else that isn't nailed down. Until we wake up a lot more of them, we certainly won't extend Medicare to everybody.

As Glen Greenwald and others point out, the excuse for not getting things done in the Bush years was that we didn't control the Congress. When Democrats swept the Congress in 2006 the excuse was that we had to hold our fire to make sure the right presidential candidate got in, and anyway the Republicans could filibuster anything they wanted. Now with a Democratic president, a House majority and a filibuster-proof majority the excuses are House blue dogs, Republican birthers, and a few right-wing senators of both parties. In Obamaland these are sufficient and suitable excuses for nothing being accomplished. But not in the real world.

We have to tell the truth as we know it, and engage them, persistently, respectfully. Some won't hear us, some won't even respect the exchange but that's OK too. We have to engage them as though someone else were listening, and often enough, somebody else will be. And more of us will sober up, and head for those exits.

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