Obama Has Governed as a Conservative

AlterNet.org

AlterNet / By Guy T. Saperstein

Andrew Sullivan is Right: Obama Has Governed as a Conservative

Sullivan took Obama's critics to task for not recognizing his accomplishments--sadly, those accomplishments only appeal to "conservative-minded independents" like him.

January 23, 2012 |

Last week, Newsweek magazine and The Daily Beast published an article by Andrew Sullivan, “How Obama’s Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics,” which excoriated left-wing critics for failing to appreciate how much Obama has accomplished, while at the same time trying to convince conservatives that Obama is not a liberal, let alone a socialist, and that, in fact, he has governed as a conservative. The fact that these two critiques are internally inconsistent has somehow managed to escape Mr. Sullivan.

The main case Mr. Sullivan, a self-described “conservative-minded independent,” makes for Obama is that, “he continued the bank bailout begun by George W. Bush, he initiated the bailout of the auto industry, and he worked to pass a huge stimulus package of $787 billion.”

In fact, Obama deserves even more credit for the bank bailout (TARP) than Sullivan gives him: Obama did not simply “continue the bank bail-out,” he, more than Bush, was the main reason TARP passed Congress, as Congress first rejected TARP, then passed it by a narrow margin when Obama, then far in the lead of McCain in the Presidential race, endorsed it and actively campaigned for its passage. It was the first, but not the last, example of Obama promoting a Republican plan.

Sullivan essentially argues that the bank rescue was necessary, so stop whining about it and give Obama the credit he deserves. There are many problems with this theory, the first of which is that TARP, and the subsequent giveaways and guarantees given to banks by the Federal Reserve and overseen by Obama, put too much of a burden on taxpayers, too little on the bank shareholders, and placed almost no conditions on the banks in terms of how they used the federal hand-outs or how they compensated the managers of these failed banks. Normally, when a business fails in a capitalist economy, the shareholders take the losses. But what TARP did was shift losses for toxic investments in poorly collateralized debts (mostly mortgages) to taxpayers. At the same time the private equity market was paying 20 cents on the dollar for toxic assets, Obama’s advisor and later Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, was counseling Obama to agree to pay 100 cents on the dollar for the same junk, which he did. If you read Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz’ book, “Freefall,” you will see that Obama did this passively and reflexively, without any serious consideration of alternatives. Not only did the federal government overpay and over-guarantee bank obligations, it imposed no conditions on the banks to loan money to Main Street.

The central economic problem, of course, was the freezing up of credit, which blocked investment and development; even if saving the biggest banks was required (as opposed to other options, such as nationalizing the largest banks or letting banks fail and establishing a federal lending institution), the fact that money was not distributed downward into the economy allowed the economy to continue to stagnate while the banks were awash in cash, which they used mainly to buy up small and mid-sized banks so today the big banks are even bigger and there are fewer community-based and mid-sized banks to compete with them. And, of course, the banks continued their excessive compensation practices unabated while most taxpayers saw their house values, pension plans and net worth fall 30-40%. Arianna Huffington said at the time that Obama had sacrificed 70% of his credibility with voters by standing with the banks, and not average people, and that seems about right to me. The Democrats historic shellacking in the November 2010 election confirms this assessment. Was that huge election defeat part of Obama’s “long game,” Mr. Sullivan?

Sullivan credits Obama with saving the auto industry, and I agree that credit is warranted. But Sullivan fails to note how differently auto workers were treated than bankers by Obama. When the Obama Administration agreed to invest in the auto companies, they did so on the condition that future worker wages and benefits would be substantially diminished, so what you now have in the auto industry is a two-tier wage/benefits scale, with older workers getting good wages and benefits and younger workers getting substantially less now and in their futures. No such wage or compensation limits were placed on bankers, despite the fact that the federal bank bailouts and guarantees were more than a hundred times bigger than the auto bailouts. If and when “long game” historians write the obituary of organized labor, the auto industry’s two-tier wage cram-down by Obama will merit a chapter.

Sullivan credits Obama with creating jobs with his $787 billion stimulus plan, but fails to note that $282 billion of this was tax cuts which no one had asked for and which had very little stimulus effect, as people used their tax rebates to pay off debt. That left only $500 billion for real stimulus---approximately 1/3 of what his economic advisors considered necessary to jolt the economy and bring it back to life. If you read Ron Suskind’s marvelous book, “Confidence Men,” which carefully examines the stimulus decision within the Obama White House, it becomes painfully obvious that the decision had little to do with economic projections, let alone what was needed economically---instead, the decision was driven entirely by politics, with Rahm Emanuel and Obama deciding that the stimulus had to be less than $1 trillion for cosmetic and political purposes. The fact that putting too little money into the economic stimulus might not create sufficient jobs to fix the economy and that Obama might be judged in the 2010 and 2012 elections by economic results, not political perceptions, seems to have escaped Mr. Sullivan. Or, perhaps it is part of Obama’s “long game” that Mr, Sullivan cherishes.

Sullivan cites some job creation statistics, but all his comparisons are to Bush’s presidency, which sets an extremely low bar for job creation. The truth is that Obama, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers badly miscalculated the problems of the economy, projecting that unemployment would top out at 8%, when, in fact, it rose to 10.2% and remains around 9% only because millions of workers have dropped out of the labor market due to discouragement. That is the main reason Obama’s re-election is in doubt, despite the Clown Act that is the Republican Presidential primaries.

Sullivan chides his conservative friends for criticizing Obamacare. He explains that it is a very conservative program, based entirely on Republican principles and ideas developed in conservative think tanks and endorsed by a long line of Republicans: “Obamacare…is based on the individual mandate, an idea pioneered by the archconservative Heritage Foundation, Newt Gingrich, and, of course, Mitt Romney, in the past. It does not have the public option, it gives a huge new client base to the drug and insurance companies; its health-insurance exchanges were also pioneered by the right.” In fact, Obamacare is “remarkably similar to Nixon’s 1974 proposal.”

This should put to rest any claim that Obamacare is a progressive healthcare reform; in fact, it brings 30 million involuntary customers and $500 billion per year of new revenues to the private health insurance industry, with no public healthcare competition and no meaningful cost controls---despite the fact that in 2008 Obama had campaigned against the individual mandate and for a public healthcare option (was this flip-flop part of the Obama “long game,” Mr, Sullivan?). Of course, claiming any benefits from this “reform” assumes that the individual mandate is not declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, but most legal analysts think there is at least a 50% chance the Court will strike it down as beyond the powers of the federal government under the Commerce Clause. If the individual mandate falls, Obamacare totally collapses, a fact Mr. Sullivan fails to include in his assessment of Obama’s “long game.”

Sullivan gives credit to Obama for tracking down Osama bin Laden, but fails to ask why a kill order was issued, when clearly the unarmed bin Laden could have been captured and brought back for trial. But Sullivan does not appear bothered by that or the summary executions, often of innocent people, caused by the expanded drone wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan which have fueled Islamic extremism in the most dangerous country on earth.

Sullivan credits Obama for leaving Iraq, despite the fact that the withdrawal was negotiated by President Bush, not Obama, despite the fact that the Obama Administration worked mightily to extend the occupation past the agreed departure date and despite the fact that the only reason the U.S. is finally withdrawing is that the Iraqi Parliament refused to continue to grant immunity to U.S. troops for crimes committed on Iraq soil. In a nutshell, despite running as an anti-Iraq War candidate, Obama surrounded himself with national security advisors who all had supported the invasion of Iraq, including his Secretaries of State and Defense, and his policies and performance in Iraq have not been different in any significant way from Bush/Cheney.

Sullivan also points out that Obama ignored “the war crimes of the recent past,” which Sullivan deplores.

Sullivan acknowledges that, “Not only did he [Obama] agree not to sunset the Bush tax cuts for his entire first term, he has aggressively lowered taxes on most Americans.” Obama’s decision to continue the Bush tax cuts for the rich was extremely unpopular; in fact, a December 3, 2010 CBS News poll showed that only 26% of voters believed tax cuts should be extended to people making more than $250,000 a year and these tax cuts for people who have done extremely well in a bad economy are projected to cost $800 billion. Surely, Sullivan argues, Obama deserves credit from conservatives for those big-ticket giveaways, especially to the rich; in fact, he argues, “You could easily make the case that Obama has been far more fiscally conservative than his predecessor….” But Sullivan fails to acknowledge the fiscal consequence of such fiscal conservatism and continued tax giveaways---a major reduction in federal tax revenues. As a consequence of these and other tax short-falls, Obama was the first Democratic President in American history to put on the table for negotiations with Republicans major reductions in Social Security benefits, Medicare and Medicaid---concessions sure to thrill and delight conservatives.

So, yes, Mr. Sullivan, you have convinced me. Obama has governed as a conservative. Progressives might want to take note.

Guy T. Saperstein is a past president of the Sierra Club Foundation; previously, he was one of the National Law Journal’s "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America."

Why Focus On Obama's Dumbest Critics?

Published on Wednesday, January 18, 2012 by The Atlantic

Dear Andrew Sullivan: Why Focus On Obama's Dumbest Critics?

A conversation-changing defense of the president exaggerates Obama's accomplishments and misses the point: his scandalous transgressions against rule of law

by Conor Friedersdorf

After reading Andrew Sullivan's Newsweek essay about President Obama, his critics, and his re-election bid, I implore him to ponder just one question. How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the following?

No, Obama isn't a radical Kenyan anti-colonialist. But he is a lawbreaker and an advocate of radical executive power. What precedent could be more radical than insisting that the executive is empowered to draw up a kill list of American citizens in secret, without telling anyone what names are on it, or the legal justification for it, or even that it exists? What if Newt Gingrich inherits that power? (Image credit: Reuters)

(1) Codify indefinite detention into law; (2) draw up a secret kill list of people, including American citizens, to assassinate without due process; (3) proceed with warrantless spying on American citizens; (4) prosecute Bush-era whistleblowers for violating state secrets; (5) reinterpret the War Powers Resolution such that entering a war of choice without a Congressional declaration is permissible; (6) enter and prosecute such a war; (7) institutionalize naked scanners and intrusive full body pat-downs in major American airports; (8) oversee a planned expansion of TSA so that its agents are already beginning to patrol American highways, train stations, and bus depots; (9) wage an undeclared drone war on numerous Muslim countries that delegates to the CIA the final call about some strikes that put civilians in jeopardy; (10) invoke the state-secrets privilege to dismiss lawsuits brought by civil-liberties organizations on dubious technicalities rather than litigating them on the merits; (11) preside over federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries; (12) attempt to negotiate an extension of American troops in Iraq beyond 2011 (an effort that thankfully failed); (13) reauthorize the Patriot Act; (13) and select an economic team mostly made up of former and future financial executives from Wall Street firms that played major roles in the financial crisis.

I submit that had Palin or Cheney or Rumsfeld or Rice or Jeb Bush or John Bolton or Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney proposed doing even half of those things in 2008, you'd have declared them unfit for the presidency and expressed alarm at the prospect of America doubling down on the excesses of the post-September 11 era. You'd have championed an alternative candidate who avowed that America doesn't have to choose between our values and our safety.

Yet President Obama has done all of the aforementioned things.

Pretend that you knew, circa 2008, that President Cheney or Palin or Rice or Rumsfeld or Giuliani would do all those things -- but that, on the bright side, they'd refrain from torturing anyone else, end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, sign a bank bailout, and pass a health-care bill that you regard as improving on the status quo starting in 2014. Would you vote for them on that basis?

I submit that you would not. And if they were elected, and four years later were running for re-election, would you focus on the stupidity of the least persuasive attacks on their tenure? Or would you laud their most incisive critics? I believe that you'd be among their most incisive critics.

Back to the present.

The Newsweek cover headline for Sullivan's piece is "Why Are Obama's Critics So Dumb?" It's entirely defensible to point out that many critiques of Obama are laughably disconnected from reality -- I've done that myself on many occasions -- so it's arguably a fair headline.

But the one I've chosen is fair too: "Why Focus on Obama's Dumbest Critics?"

No, Obama isn't a radical Kenyan anti-colonialist. But he is a lawbreaker and an advocate of radical executive power. What precedent could be more radical than insisting that the executive is empowered to draw up a kill list of American citizens in secret, without telling anyone what names are on it, or the legal justification for it, or even that it exists? What if Newt Gingrich inherits that power?

He may yet.

Over the years, Sullivan has confronted, as few others have, American transgressions abroad, including torture, detainee abuse, and various imperial ambitions. He's long drawn attention to civil-liberties violations at home too, as a solo blogger and as lead editor and writer of a blogazine. When I worked for Sullivan, he not only published but actively encouraged items I found that highlighted civil-liberties abuses by the Obama Administration, and since I parted ways with The Daily Dish, he and the Dish team have continued to air critiques of Obama on these questions.

But his Newsweek essay fits the pattern I've lamented of Obama apologists who tell a narrative of his administration that ignores some of these issues and minimizes the importance of others, as if they're a relatively unimportant matter to be set aside in a sentence or three before proceeding to the more important business of whether the president is being critiqued fairly by obtuse partisans.

Sullivan should reconsider this approach.

During President Bush's first term, Sullivan will recall the most unhinged attacks on him -- the comparisons to Hitler, the puppets burned in effigy, the comparisons to a chimp. There wasn't anything wrong with lamenting those attacks, just as there's nothing wrong with pointing out exaggerated and baseless attacks on Obama, which have spread through most of the Republican Party. But the priority put on rebutting the least persuasive left-wing critiques of Bush, and pre-election 2004 worrying about the flaws of the Democratic field, are part of what postponed the backlash against Bush's ruinous policies. The backlash should've been the priority all along.

The same is now true of Obama. Like President Bush, he is breaking the law, transgressing against civil liberties, and championing a radical view of executive power -- and he is invoking the War on Terror to get away with it. As much as it was in 2003 or 2007, it is vital in 2012 that there be a backlash against these post-9/11 excesses, that liberty-loving citizens push back so that these are anomalies that are reined in, rather than permanent features of a bipartisan consensus that can only end in a catastrophically abusive executive operating in an office stripped by successive presidents and their minions of both constitutional and prudential checks.

Beyond strenuously objecting to the focus of his piece and what it doesn't mention, and agreeing with some of Sullivan's points, I have important disagreements with others. "Where Bush talked tough and acted counter-productively, Obama has simply, quietly, relentlessly decimated our real enemies, while winning the broader propaganda war," Sullivan writes. "Since he took office, al Qaeda's popularity in the Muslim world has plummeted." But it's surely relevant that, according to surveys like this one from James Zogby in 2011, "After improving with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, U.S. favorable ratings across the Arab world have plummeted. In most countries they are lower than at the end of the Bush Administration, and lower than Iran's favorable ratings (except in Saudi Arabia)." And in the areas where Obama's drone strikes are killing innocent civilians, he is trading short-term terrorist deaths for the possibility that our policies will create more terrorists in the long run. It's a tradeoff some people consider prudent; but that's different from saying he is "winning the propaganda war." In fact, the predictable effect of some of his policies is to increase hatred of the U.S.

© 2012 The Atlantic

Conor Friedersdorf is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he focuses on politics and national affairs. He lives in Venice, California, and is the founding editor of The Best of Journalism, a newsletter devoted to exceptional nonfiction.

Why I’m Suing Barack Obama

Chris Hedges' Columns

Why I’m Suing Barack Obama

Posted on Jan 16, 2012

AP / Dusan Vranic

Detainees pray at the U.S. military detention facility known as Camp Bucca in Iraq in this 2009 photo.

By Chris Hedges

Attorneys Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran filed a complaint Friday in the Southern U.S. District Court in New York City on my behalf as a plaintiff against Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the president Dec. 31.

The act authorizes the military in Title X, Subtitle D, entitled “Counter-Terrorism,” for the first time in more than 200 years, to carry out domestic policing. With this bill, which will take effect March 3, the military can indefinitely detain without trial any U.S. citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. And suspects can be shipped by the military to our offshore penal colony in Guantanamo Bay and kept there until “the end of hostilities.” It is a catastrophic blow to civil liberties.

To read Chris Hedges’ legal filing aimed at overturning a new law that would allow the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens deemed terrorism suspects, click here. To read the law itself, click here.

I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge. I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have “disappeared” into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.

Section 1031 of the bill defines a “covered person”—one subject to detention—as “a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”

The bill, however, does not define the terms “substantially supported,” “directly supported” or “associated forces.”

I met regularly with leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. I used to visit Palestine Liberation Organization leaders, including Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad, in Tunis when they were branded international terrorists. I have spent time with the Revolutionary Guard in Iran and was in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey with fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. All these entities were or are labeled as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. What would this bill have meant if it had been in place when I and other Americans traveled in the 1980s with armed units of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua or the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front guerrillas in El Salvador? What would it have meant for those of us who were with the southern insurgents during the civil war in Yemen or the rebels in the southern Sudan? I have had dinner more times than I can count with people whom this country brands as terrorists. But that does not make me one.

Once a group is deemed to be a terrorist organization, whether it is a Palestinian charity or an element of the Uighur independence movement, the military can under this bill pick up a U.S. citizen who supported charities associated with the group or unwittingly sent money or medical supplies to front groups. We have already seen the persecution and closure of Islamic charity organizations in the United States that supported the Palestinians. Now the members of these organizations can be treated like card-carrying “terrorists” and sent to Guantanamo.

But I suspect the real purpose of this bill is to thwart internal, domestic movements that threaten the corporate state. The definition of a terrorist is already so amorphous under the Patriot Act that there are probably a few million Americans who qualify to be investigated if not locked up. Consider the arcane criteria that can make you a suspect in our new military-corporate state. The Department of Justice considers you worth investigating if you are missing a few fingers, if you have weatherproof ammunition, if you own guns or if you have hoarded more than seven days of food in your house. Adding a few of the obstructionist tactics of the Occupy movement to this list would be a seamless process. On the whim of the military, a suspected “terrorist” who also happens to be a U.S. citizen can suffer extraordinary rendition—being kidnapped and then left to rot in one of our black sites “until the end of hostilities.” Since this is an endless war that will be a very long stay.

This demented “war on terror” is as undefined and vague as such a conflict is in any totalitarian state. Dissent is increasingly equated in this country with treason. Enemies supposedly lurk in every organization that does not chant the patriotic mantras provided to it by the state. And this bill feeds a mounting state paranoia. It expands our permanent war to every spot on the globe. It erases fundamental constitutional liberties. It means we can no longer use the word “democracy” to describe our political system.

The supine and gutless Democratic Party, which would have feigned outrage if George W. Bush had put this into law, appears willing, once again, to grant Obama a pass. But I won’t. What he has done is unforgivable, unconstitutional and exceedingly dangerous. The threat and reach of al-Qaida—which I spent a year covering for The New York Times in Europe and the Middle East—are marginal, despite the attacks of 9/11. The terrorist group poses no existential threat to the nation. It has been so disrupted and broken that it can barely function. Osama bin Laden was gunned down by commandos and his body dumped into the sea. Even the Pentagon says the organization is crippled. So why, a decade after the start of the so-called war on terror, do these draconian measures need to be implemented? Why do U.S. citizens now need to be specifically singled out for military detention and denial of due process when under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force the president can apparently find the legal cover to serve as judge, jury and executioner to assassinate U.S. citizens, as he did in the killing of the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen? Why is this bill necessary when the government routinely ignores our Fifth Amendment rights—“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law”—as well as our First Amendment right of free speech? How much more power do they need to fight “terrorism”?

Fear is the psychological weapon of choice for totalitarian systems of power. Make the people afraid. Get them to surrender their rights in the name of national security. And then finish off the few who aren’t afraid enough. If this law is not revoked we will be no different from any sordid military dictatorship. Its implementation will be a huge leap forward for the corporate oligarchs who plan to continue to plunder the nation and use state and military security to cow the population into submission.

The oddest part of this legislation is that the FBI, the CIA, the director of national intelligence, the Pentagon and the attorney general didn’t support it. FBI Director Robert Mueller said he feared the bill would actually impede the bureau’s ability to investigate terrorism because it would be harder to win cooperation from suspects held by the military. “The possibility looms that we will lose opportunities to obtain cooperation from the persons in the past that we’ve been fairly successful in gaining,” he told Congress.

But it passed anyway. And I suspect it passed because the corporations, seeing the unrest in the streets, knowing that things are about to get much worse, worrying that the Occupy movement will expand, do not trust the police to protect them. They want to be able to call in the Army. And now they can.

Text of Hedges’ Legal Complaint

NDAA Official Text

To read Chris Hedges’ legal filing aimed at overturning a new law that would allow the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens deemed terrorism suspects, click here. To read the law itself, click here.

January 7, 2012 at 20:10:36

Is Obama the Trojan Horse, A Psychopath, A Bad Boyfriend or all Three?

By Julia Dalton (about the author)

I believe Barack Obama was put into office to do what no Republican could ever have gotten away with. Obama has extended the wars, created new wars, extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich, given additional bail out money to the banks, allowed the health insurance industry to write the healthcare bill, extended the Patriot Act and signed the NDAA.


Barack T-Shirt by self


Under his watch not one member of the Bush Administration has been held accountable for leading us into wars built on false evidence and lies; not one banker has been held accountable for the fraud and corruption that brought down the global economy. And the final nail in the coffin, Mr. Slim Shady signed the NDAA bill on New Year's Eve while most American's sipped champagne and sang Auld Lang Syne . The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) makes America the battlefield and allows indefinite detention of U.S. citizens suspected of "terrorist" leanings without due process.

But why be so negative you might ask? Here are a few things Obama did manage to do. He extended unemployment benefits because they're no jobs as his stimulus package was too small. He also managed to cut payroll taxes, which is a back door way to defund Social Security, He helped cover up the BP oil spill in the Gulf by allowing Coexit, a toxic disbursement not allowed in other countries, to break up the oil which then dropped to the bottom instead of just cleaning it up. In other words, allowing them to hide the body.

Obama hates truth tellers such as Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and whistleblowers like Bradley Manning who's been held in detention for almost two years for, according to Obama, exposing state secrets aka a horrendous war crime. That is if Manning is the alleged leaker who gave the "Collateral Murder" video to WikiLeaks showing 12 civilians murdered by American soldiers. What is the difference between the "Collateral Murder" war atrocity and the 1970 My Lai Massacre and the Court-Martial of Captain Ernest L. Medina? What is the difference between the Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning? I mean isn't this evidence we're now living in a corporate/fascist/ military/police state?

Now look, I know they're still plenty of Obama supporters among us but I find it very difficult to understand why so many people still love, honor and support this guy. I voted for this guy too. I fell for his smooth talk, cool demeanor and wide-open smile. I've always been a sucker for tall dark and handsome but if he wasn't lying then he's lying now and I for one am mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

I know it's hard to admit you made a mistake. I get it. You really believed this guy was "the one" and he is the one for the 1%: Wall Street, the too big to fail banks, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, big oil, big pharma, i.e. the corporate fascist state he's so gingerly locking into place.

We looked the other way when he said he'd put on comfy shoes and march with the unions and then when the unions had their bargaining rights withdrawn, Obama like the good corporate shill he is, remained silent. We made excuses for him when he remained silent as the police brutalized, beat, pepper sprayed and shot projectiles at peaceful demonstrators. Obama, unlike Robert Kennedy who had the balls to stand up to the racists down south and brought in the National Guard to protect those fighting for their civil rights, is a coward.

It could be battered spouse syndrome. I know there are people hospitalized with a broken jaw or collarbone and they won't press charges against their attackers. I can't explain why victims protect their abusers but they do and not only do they protect them, they go back to them over and over only to be beaten again and again.

Or maybe it's the Stockholm syndrome whereby victims fall in love with their captors. It happens. No need to beat yourself up over it.

To me Obama's like the bad boyfriend. He lies to you, cheats on you, forgets to call, but you just keep taking him back and making excuses. "Well, he can't help it. He has to stand up to those mean Republicans." Right?

And, therefore, I feel it's my duty to do an intervention. For those of you still deluding yourselves, who still can't face reality I suggest therapy or better yet maybe pick up a copy of "He's just Not That Into You."

I know it's hard. I told you I voted for him too. I sent him money. I believed him. But let's be honest this guy is a lying, cheating, warmongering, opportunist who serves the 1% so he might get reelected. He's in bed with Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobile, GE and whoever else will pay him for his services.

He does throw us the occasional bone like the recent appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And studies show even rats will keep going back to find the food pellet over and over again even if it only shows up very rarely. But there comes a time when one must admit they were wrong, cut their losses and move on.

Not to worry they're other fish in the sea. Jill Stein of the Green Party has a very sane 5-point program. I know she may seem boring as we all love our bad boys but really a psychopath who murders innocent civilians and destroys countries using drone attacks will eventually turn on you. Didn't you see "Sleeping With the Enemy?" Hello! And there's also Anderson of the Justice Party. So don't despair you'll find somebody new. Maybe not right away but you won't have to sleep alone forever.

The Obama brand is collapsing just as the Bush brand before him became so craven even the most deluded had to recognize the fraud that had been perpetrated upon the American people.

For those of you who still don't see it you're sort of like the Bushies who believed in the Iraq war and defended the honesty and integrity of their fearless leader no matter how many lies he told. I guess it may prove the old adage. Love really is blind.

www.recoveringarmybrat.wordpress.com

Jill Dalton is a recovering army brat/writer/performer/activist who has appeared in film and television as well as performing her solo plays in New York and around the country. Most recently she can be seen in and consulted for William Hurt on the (more...)

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