Barack Obama

[domi]

Plus que ça change, plus que ça reste la même chose.

Obama sure is inheriting a giant mess.

One thing I have noticed is a huge emotional release with people in general. One of our friends called crying with happiness. We had somebody drive up our hill honking the car horn.

Anything you're seeing in your area?

 

[anart]

Same here - people are ecstatic and Colorado always goes Republican - not only did Obama take Colorado, but it looks like the congressional seats have gone Democratic as well - a full sweep -  the strength of the emotional release is actually a bit shocking.  It's difficult to not wonder what is 'next'.

 

[domi]

Same here - people are ecstatic and Colorado always goes Republican - not only did Obama take Colorado, but it looks like the congressional seats have gone Democratic as well - a full sweep - the strength of the emotional release is actually a bit shocking. It's difficult to not wonder what is 'next'.

As I told my wife: Let's not get too excited because Bush isn't gone yet.

As we know from Germany in the 20's and 30's, this raw emotion can be "harnessed" for nefarious purposes.

 

[PepperFritz]

I'm wondering about the false expectations people have, what will happen when they start to realize that it's nothing more than the same-old same-old with a different face. How long will the "honeymoon" last?

 

[Beau]

How long will the "honeymoon" last?

Hehe, just wrote the same thing on the Guy Fawkes thread. Yeah, he'll have to show his colors, or rather, show who he answers to, eventually. I'll be watching with interest.

 

[knowledge_of_self]

Plus que ça change, plus que ça reste la même chose.

Obama sure is inheriting a giant mess.

One thing I have noticed is a huge emotional release with people in general. One of our friends called crying with happiness. We had somebody drive up our hill honking the car horn.

Anything you're seeing in your area?

Hi,
Yeah I got a couple of really happy calls from my American friends. "YES OBAMA WON!!!!! WOOOOOOOT"
I don't really know what to say, I'm not happy or sad. I just think it's really interesting and it all seems like a movie and I can't wait to see what happens.

 

[PepperFritz]

For anyone tempted to get caught up in the euphoric high expectations represented by Obama's election win, here's a sobering "reality check" from Ralph Nader:


An Open Letter to Barack Obama:
Between Hope and Reality
by Ralph Nader, CounterPunch.org
November 3, 2008


Dear Senator Obama:

In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.

Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.

You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with Hamas-- the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored "direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President."

Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.'"

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.

Israeli writer and peace advocate-- Uri Avnery-- described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future-- if and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people."

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque." None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans-- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!

But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America.

Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics-- opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)-- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.

Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily.

.

 

[combsbt]

I'm in Richmond, Virginia and people are yelling "OBAMA" in the street periodically. It's weird that people are so happy about this.

 

[Hildegarda]

An Open Letter to Barack Obama:
Between Hope and Reality
by Ralph Nader, CounterPunch.org

great article, thank you for sharing.

 

[Kesdjan]

I know that the only real answer is to "wait and see", but I still can't help wandering what the PTB's plans are for Obama.

If Obama willingly helps create the "new economic world order", then fascism might be more easily masked by a charismatic non-psychopathic figurehead (as described by Lobacezewski).

On the otherhand, if Obama resists the new world order, then they might just assassinate him and declare martial law in the ensuing chaos.

Well, interesting times at least

 

[Azur]

On the otherhand, if Obama resists the new world order, then they might just assassinate him and declare martial law in the ensuing chaos.

Well, interesting times at least

I was in a small rural pub tonight (in Canada), where the patrons there would proudly admit they're hicks. They're mostly farmers, contractors, blue collar types. They normally come in after their weekly hockey game, to catch the NHL scores and whatnot, eat wings and quaff pitchers of beer.

One of the TVs in the place out of 7 (and the smallest of the bunch too) was on the US election, all others on sports. Incredibly, they were glued to the election results and were discussing it.

The consensus was: if Obama really is the man the American people think he is, if he actually does try to change things, how long will he last? They actually started to lay odds, a la hockey pool, about how long he would be assassinated or crippled (unable to act politically).

When the local yokels are paying attention to something so remote to their day-to-day lives and know the fix is in, you have to wonder how much further things have to go before there's big trouble.

 

[ScioAgapeOmnis]

Well, Obama won. Both McCain and Obama reminded everyone in their speeches that if anyone doubts that America is still free and has fully functional democracy, then this election should somehow prove that fact (not sure how..). Obama said the government is still by the people, of the people, and for the people. I mean, can a lie be more blatant than that? That has never been true in America's history ever, and especially not now. So right there he's either really naive or a liar. Some argue that he has to "pretend" to play along with the PTB so he can get power and undermine them somehow. But what is the basis of this idea? This could be said about any politician in history of humanity that sold ideas of hope and change, but so far that never happened. Why should now be suddenly different?

It never happened before because it is impossible, it is the people and only the people who can change things. But if Obama keeps lying to the people about their true situation and actively helps maintain their sleep and comfortable illusions, then how is he going to change anything? Americans have been prepared by the media to expect an assassination, and that's basically a message to Obama to always keep in mind the hand that feeds him, and how easily that food can be deprived.

What power does Obama have behind the scenes? Remember what "V" said, a man can be stopped, killed, shut down. An idea cannot. Until Obama starts telling the people the truth (which he hasn't been, and obviously will not suddenly start in the future) there is no idea behind him, he's just a man. And as a man he's powerless. Unfortunately historically anybody that went directly to the people and started telling them the truth kinda got shot.

But as the C's say, let's wait and see. There is no better proof of a pudding (or rotten fruit) than in the eating. Chances are, Obama will not openly defy Americans. He will just be "forced" into things by circumstance. Bad things will just "happen" and poor Obama will be forced to respond. Of course the real source of those bad things will be hidden from us and we'll be asked to trust our government when they tell us the nature of the problem and how it must be solved. We cannot ask for evidence because that's a matter of national security, as always. Fortunately, wishful thinking leaves lots of holes, which SOTT will inevitably find and put on display. But for how much longer?

Watching all those hopeful and happy/crying faces tonight was unsettling. America is so easy to pacify like a crying baby. Baby America is happily sucking on its pacifier once again but the baby carriage continues to accelerate into traffic. So what's about to happen? I don't know if I want to "wait and see" on this one..

 

[foofighter]

As SAO commented, it just might have been better if McCain had won. When the choice is between "open madness" and "hidden madness", the former might be more useful in bringing about real change, as it would be painfully obvious just how screwed up the whole thing is. Now there will be a period of sleep before the US people realize they've been had, once again, if they ever really do realize it that is.

I have been following this election through The Daily Show, which has proven to put both sides into a rather dark perspective. On their homepage is a section of clips with the reporters, with their off-camera commentary, which pretty much sums it up. You can view it here (bottom left):
_http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Especially John Oliver's comment about how reporting on this has completely demoralized him is what the people in the US should be feeling right now. Completely demoralized and open for suggestions.

 

[Hildegarda]

it just might have been better if McCain had won. When the choice is between "open madness" and "hidden madness", the former might be more useful in bringing about real change, as it would be painfully obvious just how screwed up the whole thing is. Now there will be a period of sleep before the US people realize they've been had, once again, if they ever really do realize it that is.

fwiw, I disagree. Open madness means that there is no time left for any change. Hidden madness means that there is, may be, a slightly wider window of time in which we can keep flapping butterfly wings.

 

[Hildegarda]

Especially John Oliver's comment about how reporting on this has completely demoralized him is what the people in the US should be feeling right now. Completely demoralized and open for suggestions.

can't seem to get the video going. When I click on it, empty screen comes up. Am I doing something wrong, or is it no longer available?