Can This Honeymoon Be Saved? (Part 1)

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New World Notes News
Volume 2, Number 38 -- September 22, 2009

This week in New World Notes, radio program #82, September 22 & 25:

Can This Honeymoon
Be Saved?

Part 1: War and More War

You don't have to be Jewish . . . to love Levy's Rye Bread, the famous ad slogan went. And you don't have to be a screaming, sanity-challenged, hyena-like Republican TV pundit reading from a script written by Karl Rove . . . to be getting flabbergasted by many things President Obama is doing in our name . . . and with our money, what's left of it.

I claim no special insight here. Many Progressives have been saying the same, some of them before I joined the chorus.

In the spring of 2008--before either party had selected a candidate for President--Jello Biafra warned that Obama's personal style was far more admirable and attractive than his voting record in the Senate. (We'll hear these remarks next week, in NWN #83.) Among other correct predictions, Jello said that an Obama plan for health care reform will show more concern for the financial health of the insurance industry than for whether the citizens live or die.

In a recent article, journalist and essayist Chris Hedges apologized for, in November, abandoning true Progressive candidates in favor of Obama:

• We owe Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney and the Green Party an apology. They were right. If a few million of us had had the temerity to stand behind our ideals rather than our illusions and the empty slogans peddled by the Obama campaign, we would have a platform. We forgot that social reform never comes from accommodating the power structure but from frightening it [Emphasis added]. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090810_nader_was_right_liberals_are_going_nowhere_with_obama/

Speaking in Hartford Sunday afternoon--on the U.S. government's ongoing and new military adventures--independent journalist Dahr Jamail declined to lambaste the president. But Jamail did stress repeatedly that Obama's wars and military occupations clearly violate international law, U.S. law, the oath each soldier was required to pledge, and the international conventions on war crimes that our country signed.

He urged his listeners to do more to support the GIs who are actively resisting the war . . . as Americans had done in the Vietnam era.

If only!

I myself concluded that Obama was just another money-grubbing politician when I read and heard his shameless pandering to AIPAC last year. He outdid even Hillary in demonstrating his complete fealty to whatever warmongers and ethnic-cleansers were running a certain small Middle-Eastern state.

But the AIPAC speech was just an especally clear example of the sort of behavior that's giving prostitution a bad name. Nor did receiving more money from the financial industry than any other candidate bode well.

Still, I wished and (audaciously?) hoped that my "take" on Obama was wrong, that my assessment was too harsh, that many of my dire predictions would be proved false.

Is it too soon to judge Obama?

Wall Street Bailout

The Official Synopsis:

Like the hysterical right-wing pundits--though for different reasons--Progressives are increasingly alarmed at Obama's actions & inactions. Using a wide variety of audio soures, we explore The Audacity of Betrayal & the government's astounding lack of "change we can believe in." This installment focuses (though not exclusively) on war, the military, and "defense" spending. First of two parts.

Next Week: Part 2 -- Wealth Care, Si! . . . Health Care, Non!

PS: Because the subject is such a bummer, I tried to make the show itself fun. You'll get to hear, among other sound sources, Amy Goodman; The Dixie Chicks; Obama Girl; an Al-Jazeera documentary; the trailer for the film, War of the Roses; and me.

Leaving Obamaland
(This and previous photograph courtesy Black Agenda Report)