Joe Coscarelli

youngmanhattanite:

doublethink:

peterfeld:

(Not!)

But Obama is not Bush’s third term, that’s ridiculous. He’s operating in a world of limited options, as all presidents do, but thanks to the last eight years, his are more limited than most.

Does anyone really believe this? Obama has a Democratic Congress and had a popular mandate (that he has since squandered) to make fairly significant changes from the start. Yes, Bush committed him down certain paths (the bailouts, Iraq), but Obama has gone for those paths with far more gusto than he needed to (see, e.g., reinflating the financial bubble with massive free liquidity; appointing the same crooks who contributed to the financial bubble to all of the major levers of power over the economy; continuing and extending all of the secrecy policies started under Bush).

The worst part isn’t that he has condoned or done all of these things, but that he has never even attempted to explain to us why he felt it necessary to do them. I voted for this guy not necessarily because I thought he’d knock heads from day one, but because I thought he would at least, in contrast to Bush, truthfully explain what the executive branch was doing and why it was doing it. Instead, we’ve seen massive extensions of Bush policies and no explanation for why those extensions were necessary. Where’s that open and transparent government we were promised?

Speculating on why things are going this way, I’ve concluded that the Obama administration is right-center corporatist not because the policies of the Bush administration tied their hands, but because politicians need to be right-center corporatists to leech up campaign funding and get/retain power. I’m just wondering what the point of having power is if you’re not going to use it to help people but instead you’re just going to funnel money back into the same 1% that got you elected. It’s pointless.

The electorate was sold a bill of goods on the whole idea of “change” and now we’re seeing exactly how big the pile of bullshit was. Obama’s hands aren’t tied by eight years of Bush, they’re tied by how broken the whole U.S. political system is.

Yeah yeah, what he said!

This seems to be the logical conclusion to what I wrote here. The “true believers” are hurting and I wonder how much longer even the truest will hold on. Maybe “we” can turn this thing around. But probably not.