There really are some fantastic articles right now, about Obama's
Presidency. They vary in opinion, and most have some truth to them. There's
the whole Nation issue and a huge article in the January Atlantic, also on
BARD. When I read so many detailed articles by so many knowledgeable people,
I feel like maybe I should just shut up and listen.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2017 10:39 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Pity the Sad Legacy of Barack Obama
The Mighty Ship of State has foundered on the icy coast of a Land called
Hades. The fat rats have abandoned the Ship, heading for their Off Shore
Banks, while the ship's orchestra gathers on the tilting deck and begins
playing, "God Bless America!"
And the S O S goes out into the dark, stormy blackness. But there is no
answer.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/9/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Nation should have included this in their wonderful issue this week.justice."
They included a variety of opinions but perhaps Dr. Cornell West was a
bit too much for them. He reflects my thoughts and feelings, however.
Miriam
West writes: "What a sad legacy for our hope and change candidate -
even as we warriors go down swinging in the fading names of truth and
jail.
Barack Obama. (photo: Olivier Douliery/ABACAUSA.com)
Pity the Sad Legacy of Barack Obama
By Cornel West, Guardian UK
09 January 17
Our hope and change candidate fell short time and time again. Obama
cheerleaders who refused to make him accountable bear some
responsibility
Eight years ago the world was on the brink of a grand celebration:
the inauguration of a brilliant and charismatic black president of the
United States of America. Today we are on the edge of an abyss: the
installation of a mendacious and cathartic white president who will
replace him.
This is a depressing decline in the highest office of the most
powerful empire in the history of the world. It could easily produce a
pervasive cynicism and poisonous nihilism. Is there really any hope
for truth and justice in this decadent time? Does America even have
the capacity to be honest about itself and come to terms with its
self-destructive addiction to money-worship and cowardly xenophobia?
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Melville - the two great public
intellectuals of 19th-century America - wrestled with similar
questions and reached the same conclusion as Heraclitus: character is
destiny ("sow a character and you reap a destiny").
The age of Barack Obama may have been our last chance to break from
our neoliberal soulcraft. We are rooted in market-driven brands that
shun integrity and profit-driven policies that trump public goods. Our
"post-integrity" and "post-truth" world is suffocated by entertaining
brands and money-making activities that have little or nothing to do
with truth, integrity or the long-term survival of the planet. We are
witnessing the postmodern version of the full-scale gangsterization of
the world.
The reign of Obama did not produce the nightmare of Donald Trump - but
it did contribute to it. And those Obama cheerleaders who refused to
make him accountable bear some responsibility.
A few of us begged and pleaded with Obama to break with the Wall
Street priorities and bail out Main Street. But he followed the advice
of his "smart" neoliberal advisers to bail out Wall Street. In March
2009, Obama met with Wall Street leaders. He proclaimed: I stand
between you and the pitchforks. I am on your side and I will protect
you, he promised them. And not one Wall Street criminal executive went to
We called for the accountability of US torturers of innocent Muslimsby the profit-hungry corporate media.
and the transparency of US drone strikes killing innocent civilians.
Obama's administration told us no civilians had been killed. And then
we were told a few had been killed. And then told maybe 65 or so had
been killed. Yet when an American civilian, Warren Weinstein, was
killed in 2015 there was an immediate press conference with deep
apologies and financial compensation.
And today we still don't know how many have had their lives taken away.
We hit the streets again with Black Lives Matter and other groups and
went to jail for protesting against police killing black youth. We
protested when the Israeli Defense Forces killed more than 2,000
Palestinians (including 550 children) in 50 days. Yet Obama replied
with words about the difficult plight of police officers, department
investigations (with no police going to jail) and the additional $225m
in financial support of the Israeli army.
Obama said not a mumbling word about the dead Palestinian children but
he did call Baltimore black youth "criminals and thugs".
In addition, Obama's education policy unleashed more market forces
that closed hundreds of public schools for charter ones. The top 1%
got nearly two-thirds of the income growth in eight years even as
child poverty, especially black child poverty, remained astronomical.
Labor insurgencies in Wisconsin, Seattle and Chicago (vigorously
opposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a close confidant of Obama) were passed
over in silence.
In 2009, Obama called New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg an
"outstanding mayor". Yet he overlooked the fact that more than 4
million people were stopped-and-frisked under Bloomberg's watch. Along
with Carl Dix and others, I sat in a jail two years later for
protesting these very same policies that Obama ignored when praising
Bloomberg.
Yet the mainstream media and academia failed to highlight these
painful truths linked to Obama. Instead, most well-paid pundits on TV
and radio celebrated the Obama brand. And most black spokespeople
shamelessly defended Obama's silences and crimes in the name of racial
symbolism and their own careerism. How hypocritical to see them now
speak truth to white power when most went mute in the face of black
power. Their moral authority is weak and their newfound militancy is
shallow.
The gross killing of US citizens with no due process after direct
orders from Obama was cast aside by neoliberal supporters of all
colors. And Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Jeffrey Sterling and
other truth-tellers were demonized just as the crimes they exposed
were hardly mentioned.
The president's greatest legislative achievement was to provide
healthcare for over 25 million citizens, even as another 20 million
are still uncovered. But it remained a market-based policy, created by
the conservative Heritage Foundation and first pioneered by Mitt
Romney in Massachusetts.
Obama's lack of courage to confront Wall Street criminals and his
lapse of character in ordering drone strikes unintentionally led to
rightwing populist revolts at home and ugly Islamic fascist rebellions
in the Middle East. And as deporter-in-chief - nearly 2.5 million
immigrants were deported under his watch - Obama policies prefigure
Trump's barbaric plans.
Bernie Sanders gallantly tried to generate a leftwing populism but he
was crushed by Clinton and Obama in the unfair Democratic party
primaries. So now we find ourselves entering a neofascist era: a
neoliberal economy on steroids, a reactionary repressive attitude
toward domestic "aliens", a militaristic cabinet eager for war and in
denial of global warming. All the while, we are seeing a wholesale
eclipse of truth and integrity in the name of the Trump brand, facilitated
What a sad legacy for our hope and change candidate - even as wejail.
warriors go down swinging in the fading names of truth and justice.
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valid.
Barack Obama. (photo: Olivier Douliery/ABACAUSA.com)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/barack-obama-leg
acy-pr
esidencyhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/barack-o
bama-l
egacy-presidency
Pity the Sad Legacy of Barack Obama
By Cornel West, Guardian UK
09 January 17
Our hope and change candidate fell short time and time again. Obama
cheerleaders who refused to make him accountable bear some
responsibility ight years ago the world was on the brink of a grand
celebration: the inauguration of a brilliant and charismatic black
president of the United States of America. Today we are on the edge of
an abyss: the installation of a mendacious and cathartic white
president who will replace him.
This is a depressing decline in the highest office of the most
powerful empire in the history of the world. It could easily produce a
pervasive cynicism and poisonous nihilism. Is there really any hope
for truth and justice in this decadent time? Does America even have
the capacity to be honest about itself and come to terms with its
self-destructive addiction to money-worship and cowardly xenophobia?
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Melville - the two great public
intellectuals of 19th-century America - wrestled with similar
questions and reached the same conclusion as Heraclitus: character is
destiny ("sow a character and you reap a destiny").
The age of Barack Obama may have been our last chance to break from
our neoliberal soulcraft. We are rooted in market-driven brands that
shun integrity and profit-driven policies that trump public goods. Our
"post-integrity" and "post-truth" world is suffocated by entertaining
brands and money-making activities that have little or nothing to do
with truth, integrity or the long-term survival of the planet. We are
witnessing the postmodern version of the full-scale gangsterization of
the world.
The reign of Obama did not produce the nightmare of Donald Trump - but
it did contribute to it. And those Obama cheerleaders who refused to
make him accountable bear some responsibility.
A few of us begged and pleaded with Obama to break with the Wall
Street priorities and bail out Main Street. But he followed the advice
of his "smart" neoliberal advisers to bail out Wall Street. In March
2009, Obama met with Wall Street leaders. He proclaimed: I stand
between you and the pitchforks. I am on your side and I will protect
you, he promised them. And not one Wall Street criminal executive went to
We called for the accountability of US torturers of innocent Muslimsby the profit-hungry corporate media.
and the transparency of US drone strikes killing innocent civilians.
Obama's administration told us no civilians had been killed. And then
we were told a few had been killed. And then told maybe 65 or so had
been killed. Yet when an American civilian, Warren Weinstein, was
killed in 2015 there was an immediate press conference with deep
apologies and financial compensation.
And today we still don't know how many have had their lives taken away.
We hit the streets again with Black Lives Matter and other groups and
went to jail for protesting against police killing black youth. We
protested when the Israeli Defense Forces killed more than 2,000
Palestinians (including 550 children) in 50 days. Yet Obama replied
with words about the difficult plight of police officers, department
investigations (with no police going to jail) and the additional $225m
in financial support of the Israeli army.
Obama said not a mumbling word about the dead Palestinian children but
he did call Baltimore black youth "criminals and thugs".
In addition, Obama's education policy unleashed more market forces
that closed hundreds of public schools for charter ones. The top 1%
got nearly two-thirds of the income growth in eight years even as
child poverty, especially black child poverty, remained astronomical.
Labor insurgencies in Wisconsin, Seattle and Chicago (vigorously
opposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a close confidant of Obama) were passed
over in silence.
In 2009, Obama called New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg an
"outstanding mayor". Yet he overlooked the fact that more than 4
million people were stopped-and-frisked under Bloomberg's watch. Along
with Carl Dix and others, I sat in a jail two years later for
protesting these very same policies that Obama ignored when praising
Bloomberg.
Yet the mainstream media and academia failed to highlight these
painful truths linked to Obama. Instead, most well-paid pundits on TV
and radio celebrated the Obama brand. And most black spokespeople
shamelessly defended Obama's silences and crimes in the name of racial
symbolism and their own careerism. How hypocritical to see them now
speak truth to white power when most went mute in the face of black
power. Their moral authority is weak and their newfound militancy is
shallow.
The gross killing of US citizens with no due process after direct
orders from Obama was cast aside by neoliberal supporters of all
colors. And Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Jeffrey Sterling and
other truth-tellers were demonized just as the crimes they exposed
were hardly mentioned.
The president's greatest legislative achievement was to provide
healthcare for over 25 million citizens, even as another 20 million
are still uncovered. But it remained a market-based policy, created by
the conservative Heritage Foundation and first pioneered by Mitt
Romney in Massachusetts.
Obama's lack of courage to confront Wall Street criminals and his
lapse of character in ordering drone strikes unintentionally led to
rightwing populist revolts at home and ugly Islamic fascist rebellions
in the Middle East. And as deporter-in-chief - nearly 2.5 million
immigrants were deported under his watch - Obama policies prefigure
Trump's barbaric plans.
Bernie Sanders gallantly tried to generate a leftwing populism but he
was crushed by Clinton and Obama in the unfair Democratic party
primaries. So now we find ourselves entering a neofascist era: a
neoliberal economy on steroids, a reactionary repressive attitude
toward domestic "aliens", a militaristic cabinet eager for war and in
denial of global warming. All the while, we are seeing a wholesale
eclipse of truth and integrity in the name of the Trump brand, facilitated
What a sad legacy for our hope and change candidate - even as we
warriors go down swinging in the fading names of truth and justice.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
