I say Goodbye To Obama With Mixed Emotions

President Barack Obama has given his farewell address to the nation after eight years at America’s helm. As I’ve said in the past, I truly like Obama as a person and there is no other living President that I’d rather have a beer with than Barack. He is intelligent, articulate, compassionate and has a great sense of humor. And I stand in awe of his family and his relationship with Michelle, which has been so loving and true through very difficult times as they endured years of vilification and racist attacks from hateful conservatives.

All of that said, my assessment of Obama’s tenure as POTUS is mixed, and I cringe when I hear supporters trying to elevate his status to one of America’s greatest leaders. The highest praise I have for Obama is that he had the strength to accomplish what he did in office in the face of a hostile, obstructionist Republican congress. Getting the Affordable Care Act passed, his success in keeping the economy growing consistently, his dedication to dealing with climate change and his positive steps toward normalizing relations with Cuba are wonderful accomplishments, especially when you consider the ceaseless opposition of Obama-deranged congress-people.

The biggest disappointment I’ve experienced with Obama revolves around his early promise of “change.” When Barack first campaigned for the presidency in 2007-08, his rallying cry was “change,” and many of his speeches reminded us of the myriad failures of the two-term Bush administration, from 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq to an economy in the tank. Myself and other progressives were inspired by this rhetoric, believing that the Senator from Illinois meant that he was going change course from the horrid policies of George Bush and take us in a new direction. Unfortunately, this did not happen in some very important areas.

The undemocratic, unconstitutional security state set up by the Bush administration after 9/11 remains intact under Obama. The Patriot Act, Homeland Security and other excuses for invading privacy in the name of fighting terrorism continue to hum along undeterred despite the revelations of criminality and overreach by Edward Snowden. And it is reprehensible that the Obama administration has cared far more about intelligence leaks and how to stop them than it has about the intelligence abuses revealed by the leaks. The drone program was expanded under Obama and he has authorized more secret military operations in countries around the globe than any of his predecessors.

While his rhetoric makes him sound like one of the common folk, his actions have often been aligned with the interests of corporate America over what’s best for the rest of us. Despite the devastating effects of the 2007-08 financial crisis on this country’s economy, Obama’s corporate friendly administration refused to bring criminal bankers to justice, and he failed to support any substantive measures to rein in Wall Street. And his support of the horrid Trans-Pacific Partnership has been inexcusable. This secretive multinational agreement is a disaster for the environment and workers, allowing corporations to put profits above all else.

There is more — the Obama administration’s lackluster response to the failed war on drugs, allowing hundreds of thousands of prisoners to rot in jails for non-violent drug-related offenses, his wrong-headed, weak-kneed support of public education, his deportation of more immigrants than any president in history — and it doesn’t paint a picture of the progressive reformer many of us had hoped for.

The question is whether Obama was a good guy who was simply overwhelmed by the entrenched Washington elites or that there is a darker side to the man than his public personae lets on. I want to believe it’s the former, but either way, this is not a president who I would rank among America’s greatest.

Obama’s State of the Union Address: Inspiring Words Distract Us From the Ugly Reality

Last night Obama gave his final State of the Union Address. As usual, his words were inspiring, hopeful and eloquent but, as one Salon headline read this morning: “The depressing lesson of Obama’s final State of the Union Address: Everything’s still broken.”

It’s always been hard to dislike Obama. He’s smart, articulate and has a good sense of humor, and he has had some successes as President that were very hard fought against the Congressional Confederacy of Dunces. But for me, it’s as much about all of the things that Obama didn’t do as it is about his victories. The nightmarish legacy of George Bush lived on in the Obama years, even though Obama was elected on a promise to change direction.

War continues to engulf the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and we still play a major role in these conflicts. Although there are fewer boots on the ground in the region than during Bush’s tenure, we continue to stir the pot of violence with drone strikes, bombings and “advisors” pursuing American interests. As insane as it seems, we managed to pull Russia into the fray and we all teeter on the razor’s edge of a world war. This is hardly the peace and prosperity we hoped for from Obama.

The monster that Bush and Cheney built, the American Surveillance State, is alive and well on Obama’s watch. Seven years later we still live under the unconstitutional Patriot Act, and the CIA, NSA and all of the other spy shops are humming along nicely with Obama’s blessings. Not only did Obama fail to reign in Big Brother, he chose to focus his attention on prosecuting whistleblowers instead of the illegal activities of his surveillance agencies.

As for the economy yes, it has improved somewhat under Obama, but the larger economic picture in America today is very far from bright. Consider a few statistics:

• Most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. At this point, 62 percent of all Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts, and 21 percent of Americans do not have any savings at all.
• It’s estimated that 43 percent of all American households spend more money than they make each month.
• The Pew Research Center found that median wealth for middle class households dropped by an astounding 28 percent between 2001 and 2013.
• According to the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.
• The U.S. ranks only 19^th in the world when it comes to median wealth per adult.
• For each of the past six years, more businesses have closed in the United States than have opened. Prior to 2008, this had never happened before in all of U.S. history.
• In 2007, about one in every eight children in America was on food stamps. Today, the number is one of every five.
• The top 0.1 percent of all American families have about as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of all American families combined.

 There are many more depressing economic statistics that could be added to this list, but the trend is clear — while some aspects of the economy have improved since the Bush years, we are stagnating or losing ground in many very important areas and the American economy is far from healthy. No one says Obama is totally to blame for this situation, but he has failed to even attempt to take the bold steps necessary to address income inequality, tax reform and the criminal activities of Wall Street and America’s largest banks.

I predict history will be kind to Obama and his legacy. Compared to Bush, he seems like the ideal Commander in Chief, but when you look past the man and his rhetoric, you see a President leaving behind a country that has devolved from a democracy to a full-fledged oligarchy where “the people” are growing poorer by the day and have almost no say in how the country is run. With Obama’s departure, the Deep State is more powerful than ever, and our first African American President has unfortunately been merely another puppet to amuse and distract a pliable populace.

Obama’s legacy: Not much “there” there

Good article in Salon today by the always insightful Thomas Frank on what the Obama presidential library of the future will contain. Frank guesses that much of the museum will be devoted to hyperventilating over the Republicans in Congress and the obstructions they threw up at every turn of Obama’s presidency. Frank argues, and I think most progressives would agree, that Obama could have and should have done much more to fight the bastards rather than constantly wishing for the never attainable consensus he always seems to want. He simply hasn’t pushed hard enough for his agenda, hasn’t gone to the American people a la Reagan, hasn’t gotten angry, and therefore, hasn’t got much to show for the last six years.

No one expected Obama to walk on water or perform miracles. All we hoped for was that he would follow through on his pledge to change the destructive course set by Bush and Cheney and point America in a new direction. He hasn’t done that. He hasn’t even really tried to do that. If I were to design the Obama presidential library, it would be a very large room with nothing in it. Hidden speakers would play Obama’s speeches in an endless loop. Inspiring, hopeful words with nothing concrete to show for it.

Rumors here. Get your red hot Obama rumors here.

Republicans really, really want to impeach Obama. The problem is, they can’t decide on what to impeach him for. Being black isn’t going to get out of the starting gate. Being born in Hawaii seems un-American, but apparently, it’s not. He’s hiding something. Everyone knows it, but what? We need an Edward Snowden in the White House, a patriotic American who will finally pull back the curtain and expose the President for what he is, whatever that might be.

Meanwhile, we have the rumor mill. This is the conservative fantasy land where fevered dreams about Obama can be let loose to be repeated on FOX as fact. Here are a few of the latest that I give as a gift to frustrated Republicans:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is Obama’s half-brother.

Obama routinely flies Kenyan relatives to Washington D.C. to attend raves in the White House basement.

Obama gives copies of Mein Kampf as Christmas gifts.

Obama has a live video feed to a secret room in the White House where kittens are tortured.

Obama is about to issue an executive order making it legal to hunt white Christians.

An anonymous whistleblower claims to have been in a meeting with Obama where he shape-shifted into a reptile, Karl Marx and Elizabeth Taylor.

Obama will occasionally slip out of the White House at night and perform at local clubs as his alter ego, rapper Commander Bro.

Obama is about to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law and make narwhal tattoos mandatory.

Our puppet president

I don’t think Barack Obama is really President of the United States. No, I’m not talking about a “Kenyan-born communist Manchurian candidate” conspiracy. It’s much more below the radar than that, but no less cause for alarm. I don’t think Obama is the person who has his hands on the controls of our ship of state. Other people with names we wouldn’t recognize and benign job titles in offices in the Pentagon, NSA and CIA headquarters, the Federal Reserve and in the C suites of America’s largest companies, run this country. Obama is a figurehead.

I believe this because of the huge chasm that has existed between Obama’s words and reality since he took office in 2009. He advocated for more transparency in government, but we have less, far less. The surveillance state has its tentacles into every facet of our lives and whistleblowers are punished instead of hailed as heroes. He said he’d close Gitmo, but he hasn’t. He said he wanted to move in a new direction after eight years of Bush, but based on the government we have today, it’s like Bush never left the Oval Office. He brings economic inequality to the forefront in speeches, but his economic policies do nothing to change the status quo. He said he wanted to improve our image internationally, but recent polls indicate that citizens of other countries view the United States as the number one threat to world peace.

The Deep State is real and in control. Obama gives the speeches, poses in the photo ops, but the real work of the government is carried out by bureaucrats who are not accountable to the voters. I wonder sometimes about when Obama came to the realization that the President of the United States was merely a title and not a job description. Once you’ve been inaugurated and you’re sitting in the big leather chair in the White House, there isn’t a helluva lot you can do about it. I would think it would be soul-crushing to realize that your vision for America, the vision that voters agreed with, would never become reality, that you would be forced to spend your tenure spinning excuses for why this or that couldn’t be done, or worse, why we need to do things that you find personally reprehensible.

Yes, Obama has had to try and deal with a hostile congress, and that certainly has been a thorn in his side. But that doesn’t adequately explain why we are where we are today as a country. With the exception of the Affordable Care Act, Obama has not used his office to rally Americans around the proposals and policies he advocated as a candidate in 2008. Why? We hear a lot of the same inspiring words and phrases he used six years ago while campaigning, but once the speech is over we don’t see any effort to turn those words into reality.

If this is America’s future, a puppet president willing to dance for the public while unelected bureaucrats run the government, it’s a bleak future that will see a once powerful and admired democracy devolve into a reviled international pariah.

Obama a socialist? The facts say otherwise.

Even after six years in office, conservatives on FOX News and in congress are still banging the “Obama is a socialist” drum. Those of us who actually reside on the left end of the spectrum have known this to be a ridiculous charge from the moment it was first uttered, but it still resonates strongly in Tea Party and libertarian circles. The most recent issue of Esquire includes an important article (with charts!) that should debunk and bury this accusation once and for all (link).

As the article (with charts!) clearly shows, the President cannot even be labeled a liberal, let alone a socialist. The real Barack Obama is a hawkish, pro-business centrist Democrat in the mold of Bill Clinton. In fact, Obama used Clinton’s playbook to win his two elections; lean left during the primaries and campaigns, then, once in office, run to your comfort zone in the center. And I’ll put money on the table right now that Hillary’s campaign strategy will be exactly the same.

Obama has been a great disappointment to progressives and, I am guessing, to socialists as well. We expected change, but got more of the same.

Barack, we hardly new ye

How are we to understand Barack Obama’s transformation from an idealistic, highly intelligent, progressive, socially conscious young American black man to today’s marionette of the industrial/military complex’s puppet masters? 

Today’s issue of AlterNet features and article by Alex Kane, “5 Ways President Obama Has Doubled Down on Bush’s Most Tragic Mistakes.” One of the primary reasons why many of us voted for Obama in 2008 was the clear indication in his campaign that his administration was going to move in a new direction AWAY from the previous eight years of secrecy, militarism, isolationism, antagonism, and aggression. However, as Kane points out in his article, not only has Obama extended many of Bush’s most reviled policies, in many cases he has expanded on them. Programs related to the use of drones, warrantless wiretapping, proxy detentions, Guantanamo and indefinite detention have all been expanded under Obama.

And now, as his second term administration begins to take shape, we see Obama once again going to an establishment-friendly, change abhorrent list of nominees like John Brennan, a Bush era supporter of that President’s most controversial anti-terror tactics, as new Central Intelligence Agency director, and conservative Republican former senator Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. This was Obama's modus operandi at the beginning to his first term, as well, much to the dismay of his supporters.

Why? Why has this president gone out of his way to endorse policies and nominate cabinet members that so glaringly represent everything that was and is wrong with American domestic and foreign policy? I can’t explain it. There are days when I feel like I’m reading a Tom Clancy novel about an idealistic new president who is threatened into compliance by an evil cabal in Washington, D.C. to do their bidding. I’m not sure what other explanation makes sense. The Obama who sits in the Oval Office today is not the Obama I voted for in 2008. That person never made it to the White House.