By Mickey Walker-March 20, 2011
The other day I got a call from an Obama phone
solicitor. He wanted money of
course, and it had been over a year since I made a contribution to Obama or any
Democrat for that matter. You see,
it was not long ago that I had voted for change that I could believe in. And since then I have been watching
that change manifest itself as more of the same Neocon-based bullshit. It seems that Obama is afraid to do not
only the right thing, but the things he promised us in order to raise money for
his last campaign and to get elected as president.
I fumed when I listened to this dude on the phone, asking
for money. I did give him several
pieces of my mind, though, beginning with how Obama pardoned the phone
companies BEFORE any trial or indictments. They illegally helped Bush wiretap and listen in on private
conversations of over 1.5 million Americans (Gee whiz, were there that many
suspects as terrorists that needed looking at?). He tried to answer most of my objections with swift and
sweep-it-under-the-rug comments, e.g., “Well you cannot expect everything to
happen just right because Obama needs to bargain for the things he wants to
change, sometimes.”
Bargain, my butt, I told him…Obama promised not only to
change things when he got to Washington; he said he would go after the
wrongdoers. So what would be wrong
with Obama letting our justice system run its course and let the phone
companies be tried for breaking the law and helping George W. Bush shred our
Constitution by wiretapping us without proper court authority? Is the pardoning of the phone companies
not just another example of government by Executive Dictator, so typical of the
Decider?
Furthermore, Pres. O, what happened to closing Guantanamo,
restoring habeas corpus, and restoring our rights instead of strengthening the
Patriot Act for his own Executive privilege?
Old Washington practice would be to favor Wall Street in
times of financial crisis instead of letting the corrupt and inept companies
fail. Yet Obama fashioned a plan
to save many of the companies because they were deemed “too big to fail.” Too many jobs would be lost, he told us
all, and many were saved, e.g., AIG who recklessly insured too many bad
mortgage credit default swaps, not to mention other bad loans. So we taxpayers got to pay for saving
their incompetent ass. Ditto for all
the banks that failed, Freddie Mac, Sallie Mae, the list is endless. We get to pay for all that
mismanagement, thank you very much.
Banks got endless bailout billions as a stimulus package to
the economy, yet Americans saw very little of the stimulus package money the
banks were supposed to loan out but DID NOT.
I am one Democrat who does not believe the government has
endless money to bail out private companies who the government says are too big
to fail. If there be job losses by
keeping our government noses out of private businesses, then so be it. Is it government’s business to bail out
business? No. Is it government’s business to help
it’s citizens? As long as it
collects tax revenues, YES. That’s the purpose of taxes, not to let Halliburton
have no-bid contracts to sell us meals they don’t deliver or $500 hammers.
So then to the phone solicitor, I mentioned accountability. Obama promised to go after the
wrongdoers in government, and he and all the Democrats who were elected in the
2008 General Election, were given the voter mandate to clean it all up and to
impeach those who clearly had a hand in bringing America to the financial and
moral brink of destruction. Yet
what did they do on the day after the election, even before their first cup of
coffee? Well, here they were with
the talking heads on Good Morning America and CNN, doing a complete turnaround
by taking impeachment off the table! Say what!!!? Wasn’t going
after the wrongdoers the reason you all got elected? Did they think we wouldn’t notice?
And what about Bush lying to get us into war with Iraq? Oh, it wasn’t a lie, the phone dude
told me, and nothing that Bush ever did was impeachable. Geez, Louise, I thought, my God, and
then if the Bush White House committed no impeachable offenses, how could
anyone ever be impeached? Did they
have to get a bj in the White House and lie about it later to get
impeached? Yes, he told me, lying
was an impeachable offense. But
not arbitrarily attacking Iraq based upon having weapons of mass destruction
pointed at the US. And when later
it became evident that there were no WMDs, oh shucks, what can you say? You can’t guess right every time, he
said. I began to wonder whose side
he was on. And was his mental
outlook emanating from Obama himself? Was Obama just another slick politician?
So even if Bush did not lie about taking us to war and
causing the deaths of over 150,000 innocent human beings is it not clear that
he did NOT take the advice of his own CIA Chief who said that his information
that Hussein was trying to buy Uranium from Niger was bogus and not to use it
in Bush’s state of the union address? He used it. Knowingly! Is that not impeachable? If not the thousands killed and maimed,
what about the extra $4 Trillion dollars Bush borrowed and spent to finance the
Iraq War? Was that little ditty
not an impeachable offense? And
Obama promised to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan? What happened to his promises? Is the only reason now to support Obama
simply to insure that a bloody Neocon, like Sarah Palin, will not be elected by
the GOP or worse, the Tea Baggers and the bloody Koch family?
I mentioned other strangeness in Obama’s behavior that gives
me pause. When Bush was warned not
to go to Spain or Italy for his book tour, he was warned that he might be
nabbed and tried in a World Court for war crimes. Enter WikiLeaks whose pilfered records show that the Obama
administration exerted pressure on Spain and Italy not to collar Bush. They reconsidered when apparently Obama
threatened to withdraw US foreign aid to those countries. My, my. Please tell me, Mr. Obama, why would you do such a
thing? If anybody at all is guilty
in the eyes of the world, why would you interfere with a just due process under
the moral laws of the world? And
again, why are you protecting Bush by taking impeachment off the table and
intimidating countries who think he is guilty of torture and other high
crimes? You presidents got an
exclusive club where you all hang together even if it’s wrong?
Then Obama did an unforgivable thing, I told Mr. Phone
Guy. Obama extended Bush’s $2
Trillion tax cut for the rich! When all the Tea Baggers and Republicans are bitching about doing away
with Obama care and making cuts to Social Security benefits, Obama does what
George Bush would do if he were still president: HE EXTENDED THE TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH! While talking about cutting other
programs for the poor, the working class, etc., all the while teachers in
Wisconsin are demonstrating against an oppressive governor Scott Walker who is
taking away their union’s bargaining abilities! Oh, it was necessary to do that, right? Bull. Extending the Bush II tax cuts is the same thing John
Boehner, Newt Gingrich, Bush, and the rest of the thugs who want to drown the
Middle and Working Classes in the bath tub, would do. The Koch’s must love it. Sarah Palin must think Obama is as dumb as she is. And it hurts to say that he acts like
it. He forgot the promises he made
and the platform of “change you can believe in” he ran on.
But hold on. The guy persisted and made a few points that made me think I might be a
bit too hard on Obama. So in the
interest of getting rid of the dude and in voting in advance to not see a
Neocon replace Obama, I told him to send me a ticket in the mail and I would
give Obama a $50 contribution. I
know, I know, many of you will think I fell and hit my head. But I have always had hope. And the audacity of hope sometimes
makes you crazy when it comes to women and/or politics.
So the very next day CNN says that Obama is going to extend
the military tribunal court system at Guantanamo in order to try more of the
“military combatants” that no state would try in our criminal court
system. Say what? He ain’t going to shut G down, but now
we are going back to the Stone Age and try them again by a military
tribunal? Why don’t we just shoot
them without a trial, someone asked from the back room. A technicality is what troubles Obama
and makes him a deer in the headlights? For real? What kind of
president is he? Are all of his
promises going to be broken, eventually?
So I am thinking about the ethics involved in making promises. I have never broken one I made, though none
of mine have been as tough as the president’s, to say the least. But if he breaks them, why should I be
so righteous and keep mine? I have
to wonder what the phone solicitor and Obama might think if, instead of sending
them a check for $50, I simply returned the form with a note: “Sorry, but until you keep your
promises, I won’t be keeping mine.” I am still struggling over it. What do you think?