Ballin' with The Boss

A big part of being a high profile politician is being a good actor.  You have to be able to say all kinds of absurd things with total sincerity.  The story here is that Obama is good at acting because he practices, and he's athletic and likes sports so they like to cast him in roles in movies like "Ballin' with The Boss."  Naturally, NYT perpetuates the theatre instead of reporting, administering a slobbery tongue bath to the narcissistic asshole they describe. 

He preemptively blames his staff for problems by claiming his superiority to them at their jobs.  So confident!  My favorite part is Obama whining ("in his darker days" ha!) about how he should be judged against the accomplishments of the hypothetical Republican alternative rather than on his own record.  Dude is the exact same as them!  What, he's pissed off that we don't care that Bush didn't even bother to work hard at the acting while basically doing all the same dirt?  Dude pardoned Bush and his accomplices for their crimes and continued and escalated those crimes in between his golf lessons with PGA pros.  NYT focuses on the golf.  Dude got his Grammy and his 2008 Marketer of the Year.  He isn't satisfied with those performance awards and wants voters to give him credit for it too?  Seems kinda greedy, dude.  NYT ignores that Obama can't go all-out against the Republicans because he's complicit in all of their crimes.  So competitive!  Bullshit!  So cooperative.  So compliant.

By the way, here's the plot of Ballin' with The Boss, which won 25 Oscars, 56 Golden Globes and 3 Nobel Peace Prizes.  Once upon a time Obama called in a "double tap" drone strike on a bunch of Pakistani "militants," knowing full well the NYT would comply with his directive that all young men killed will be called militants.  A few minutes later, while he lectured a very special group of underprivileged teens how anything is possible, the first tap killed 9 members of a wedding party. A few minutes after that, the second tap killed 8 would-be rescuers and 16 survivors of the first attack.  A few days later, Obama talked a bunch of shit while slacking off on defense, then demanded the ball on offense, knowing his White House staff league basketball opponents would never risk challenging his drive to the basket.  The one time a brash young intern plays tough defense on Obama, the ref calls a highly questionable foul.  After the game, Obama teammates laud his accomplishments.  He's so smart and talented and his close friend says he tries to do his best!!  The next day the intern is fired. About a decade later, 50% of the long forgotten very special underprivileged audience have been killed or incarcerated in the war on drugs, 90% have received inadequate medical care, and the few who made it to post-secondary education are an average of $79,00 in debt with no job prospects. Meanwhile Obama basks in the luxury and prestige of the post-Presidential speaking circuit, collecting unimaginable speaking fees from all his partners who profit from the destruction of the lives of inconsequential losers.   Obama plays to win!

BO sez urrybody wants to be like USA USA USA USA!!

I dunno dude, Canada laughs at you pretty hard.

BO sez like whatever, they're totally jealous.

"Innocent until proven guilty" is meaningless: Captain Hope-n-Change Orders the Murder of an American

So, The Obama has decreed that an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, must be "killed or captured."

An "American Official" who wouldn't give his name says: "The United States works, exactly as the American people expect, to overcome threats to their security, and this individual - through his own actions - has become one. Awlaki knows what he's done, and he knows he won't be met with handshakes and flowers. None of this should surprise anyone."

I think that the American people expect that accusations by cowardly government officials who won't even give their own names as they talk tough about handshakes and flowers aren't the same as a conviction in a fair trial. But he's right that none of this should surprise.

Let's be very clear about this: Obama can simply say that someone is a "security threat" and then order them to be killed. A political leader who issues unilateral death sentences is a despot, not a fucking servant of democracy. I'd say "fuck you, Obama" but that might make me a security threat, so instead I'll just give a big fat YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY AMERICA!!!!!

almost certainly all I'll say about the NCAA tournament this year

So I've been trying to cut down on how much attention I pay to sports. Its been gradually dropping over the last few years, and is probably down to "not very much" from a high of "a whole fucking lot." But I still check in at ESPN.com every once in a while, more out of inertia and temporary boredom than actual interest. Today I stopped by and this was the front page:



Breaking news! His Majesty hath spoken! Jesus fucking Christ. Needless to say I closed the page and resolved not to go back for a long time.

Coincidentally, last night I read a passage from Understanding Power where Chomsky says some smart things about non-participatory sports. This blogger has excerpted the highlights.

let's not talk about it

March 15 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama probably would veto legislation authorizing the next budget for U.S. intelligence agencies if it calls for a new investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, an administration official said.

A proposed probe by the intelligence agencies’ inspector general “would undermine public confidence” in an FBI probe of the attacks “and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions,” Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a letter to leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

Scrutiny of government activities would make the government look bad, so Obama would prevent scrutiny of government activities. Sounds about right!

expectations

Criminalizing cancer and AIDS patients for using a substance that is (a) prescribed by their doctors and (b) legal under the laws of their state has always been abominable. The Obama administration deserves major credit not only for ceasing this practice, but for memorializing it formally in writing.

- Glenn Greenwald

What other abominable things does BO deserve credit for not doing?

I'm to the point with BO where I can't even stand to hear him talk. I have to turn it off. It took me years to get to that point with W.

didn't see this one coming did ya?

i have a hard time seeing how sarah palin would be a worse president than BO

accidental email

I think it had been over two years since I stopped getting political emails from my family, but I got one this week. Below is the original email and my response. For previous editions of this fun little game, see here and here.

-----

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

By Lou Pritchett

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I k now nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because yo u have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Lou Pritchett


Note: Lou Pritchett is a former vice president of Procter & Gamble whose career at that company spanned 36 years before his retirement in 1989, and he is the author of the 1995 business book, Stop Paddling & Start Rocking the Boat.

Mr. Pritchett confirmed that he was indeed the author of the much-circulated "open letter." “I did write the 'you scare me' letter. I sent it to the NY Times but they never acknowledged or p ublished it. However, it hit the internet and according to the ‘experts’ has had over 500,000 hits.

----

Obama scares me too, for a few of the same reasons. These 3 in particular:

>You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild
>and irresponsible spending proposals.

When the Republican Congress moved in lock-step to pass everything
Bush/Cheney told them to, they were rightfully criticized by Democrats
as mindlessly following executive orders. Now Democrats are doing the
same thing. In many cases they're actually saying that they oppose
the legislation that they're voting in favor of, but believe it is
more important to support "their" President. It is hard to see what
the point of Congress is, from a check-and-balances perspective, if
they just do whatever the executive says. It scares me to see how
easily people in positions of extreme power will cynically invoke or
ignore important principles at their convenience.

>You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view >from intelligent people.

I find this scary too, and this is true of all presidents in recent
memory. More on this later.

>You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

The media is highly deferential to power. Bush had an abysmal
approval rating for much of his presidency, and still the media
refused to call him on his blatant lies and multiple crimes against
humanity. A popular president like BO will get and even easier time
from the media, which is pretty damn terrifying. Just like Congress,
the mainstream media has abandoned any adversarial function it should
be performing, if it ever actually served one at all.


That said, the rest of the list is fairly insane. What does it say
about the author that he can begin a list with "I know nothing about
Obama," then go on to list 19 things he knows about Obama? He claims
to even know Obama's deepest feelings and desires (e.g. "you falsely
believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient"). I guess if you
can simultaneously hold two contradictory beliefs, you can believe
pretty much anything, regardless of reality, which partially explains
the craziness here.

I won't address everything point by point, though I'm tempted, but
there are two general themes of his list that I'd like to comment on.
The first theme concerns these items:

> You scare me because you lack humility and 'class',
> always blaming others.

> You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned
> yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you
> refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who
> wish to see America fail.

> You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the
> 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

The mainstream American media allows a certain a spectrum of opinion
about American foreign policy. On the right/nationalistic/

reactionary
extreme is the opinion that the US Government (hereafter "USG") is a
force for pure good in the world that is always perfectly morally
justified in anything it does and is always selflessly trying to
spread freedom and democracy across the globe. On the left/liberal
extreme is the opinion that the USG is a force for good in the world
that always acts with the purest intentions, but that has sometimes
gotten carried away in its quest for spreading freedom and democracy
and in a few isolated incidents has made regrettable mistakes. That
is the spectrum of opinion that is allowed in the US media (I say
"allowed" because editors and their bosses self-censor, not because of
any state censorship.)

The far right side can't stand even the suggestion that the USG has
ever done anything wrong, and so anyone who ever acknowledges American
misdeeds is instantly part of the "Blame America First Crowd," and
endlessly beaten over the head with this slur. This is objectionable
on several different levels.

One level of offensiveness is the inability or unwillingness to
distinguish between a group of people and their rulers. Is "America"
a nation of 300,000,000 people or the comparatively tiny group of
people that control the USG? To criticize the actions of a government
is not the same as criticizing the people of the nation, especially a
nation whose government often acts against the wishes and interests of
its population, as ours does.

So what would it mean to "wish to see America fail"? The overwhelming
majority of "radical extremists" who he's characterizing this way are
those who object to the actions of the USG, some of whom maybe even
wish for the dissolution of the government. But that doesn't mean
they wish harm on the 300,000,000 who live in the US; they think those
people would be better served with a different social arrangement.

Conservatives like Mr. Pritchett claim to value limited government.
They loved Reagan's "the government is the problem" line and supported
Gingrich when he led a shut down of the federal government in
opposition to Clinton. One would think such people would be cautious
about slinging accusations about "wishing to see America fail." But
given the breath-taking contradiction he chose to lead off this
tour-de-force screed, I don't suppose that connection has ever
occurred to him.

Beyond that, it should be noted that Obama himself is well within the
mainstream spectrum of opinion. And nobody within the spectrum
"blames America first." They all assume that America has noble
intentions, and any misdeeds they reluctantly acknowledge are taken to
be aberrant: it isn't really our fault because we were trying to help
but got carried away, or a few bad apples ruined it, or those
ungrateful Iraqis weren't willing to accept our help, etc.

My final note on that matter is that at no point does it have anything
to do with reality-based argument. There's no attempt to understand
the world, no argument as to why Obama's alleged "blame America first"
is factually incorrect or illogical. It is simply a smear designed to
demonize and avoid intelligent debate. If, as I would contend, the
unmistakeable reality is that foreign policy of the USG is not and
never has been about spreading freedom or democracy, and that it has
repeatedly immorally destroyed innocent lives around the world, should
we not acknowledge this as our first step to correcting it? (Not that
Obama does so.) Yelling "BLAME AMERICA FIRST" eliminates that
possibility, which is of course the entire point of yelling it. And
you have to yell it even at the people on the left end of the
permissible spectrum so that people outside it to the left (i.e. the
reality-based community made up of the vast majority of the rest of
the world) are ignored. And this is from the same guy who complains
about someone "refusing to listen or consider opposing points of view
from intelligent people."

So that wraps up my first general theme about discussion of American
foreign policy and "blame America first."

My second comment on general theme concerns the subtle bigotry running
through many of those items above plus these:

>You scare me because after months of exposure,

> I know nothing about you.

> You scare me because I do not know how you paid
> for your expensive Ivy League education and your
> upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

> You scare me because you did not spend the formative years
> of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

> You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the
> Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing,
> conservative points of view.

Again, America is a nation of 300 million people, the vast majority of
whom can name an immigrant among their recent ancestors. The idea
that there is a single American culture or that spending 4 years of
your childhood in another country is necessarily sinister is
incoherent at best. It strikes me that when you combine that
xenophobia with the innuendo about mysteriousness about his life and
finances, it taps into the same pockets of fear and anger that in less
polite company express themselves as overt racism. Combine THAT with
the "Blame America" nonsense, and you get "Obama is a secret Muslim
working with the terrorists to destroy America, because after all he's
a nigger with a funny name so it is obvious." The conservative
commentators he listed regularly invoke this kind of bigotry, often in
not very subtle ways, and certainly deserve scorn. (Not that Obama
actually "demonizes" yet alone "wants to silence" them).

I suppose I'll leave it at that for now.

conversations

say, adspar, what is that obama fellow up to these days?  you know, that guy who was going to change everything for the better?  the one who gives us hope?

he's been busy.

that's good.  hope and change are hard work.  what a great guy.  so clean and articulate!  so charismatic and intelligent.  so what is he doing?  lots of great and wonderful things i'm sure!

yeah, well he's been changing bush's war on terror by escalating the slaughter of civilians in pakistan.  you didn't even know we were killing pakistanis did you?  

aren't they supposed to be our allies?  

oh well, no matter.  i'm sure he has very good reasons.  just like he has good reasons to send his troops to shoot pregnant women and destroy farms and crops in afghanistan.  you should have seen how articulately he gave that order!

that sounds kind of bad actually.  but i probably just don't know enough about it.  i'm sure he has access to secret information that makes this more understandable.  we should just trust his judgment on this.  he's not bush after all!  remember all those criticisms of bush he intelligently articulated in his campaign?  surely those criticisms prove his heart is pure and good.  yes, definitely, we should just trust him.

yeah, remember how he criticized bush for kidnapping people off the street and locking them in cages in guantanamo without any ability to challenge their detention?  obama is hoping and changing this by locking them in cages in bagram instead!  that probably sounds like it contradicts his campaign rhetoric, but don't worry, i'm sure you'll figure out some way to excuse him for it.

i don't know... i'll try hard...

i think you owe him that much.  he's working very hard to make sure there are no investigations or prosecutions of the well-documented widespread use of torture by bush's henchman.  he's working hard to make sure he can torture too.  so you better work hard to excuse, rationalize, or ignore anything he does that you don't like.

adspar, you're really such a downer.  i just want to feel good about the world, and have some hope.  times are really tough, so i don't think that's too much to ask for.  but you have to go and ruin it for me.  i don't think i'm going to ask you about politics any more.

short post about a long article

Read this and then read this.

Pretty impressive, BO, pretty impressive.

Repeat

Chris Floyd:

How many times do you have to see it? How many times must it be shoved in your face, crammed down your throat, brought down on your head like a ton of bricks, before you get the picture? When it comes to the lineaments and methods of empire -- war, murder, torture, extortion, and deceit -- there is no difference, none whatsoever, between the hip, cool "progressives" in Team Obama and the gaggle of militarist goons who preceded them.

Go read the rest!

Obama is a war criminal

Just a reminder!

Obama Bombs Pakistan, Kills Afghani Civilians, Defends Bush

Chris Floyd documents the reality of the BO Presidency, making it clear that my dreams won't be coming true.  I wonder whose dreams these are:

Why speak of Gaza -- where the relentless and ruthless Israeli assault on civilians ended almost precisely with the ascension of Barack Obama to high office -- when that newly-ascended embodiment of hope is already drawing first blood in his marshalship of the "War on Terror"? Already, Obama has ordered his first drone missile attacks on the sovereign territory of Pakistan, an American ally; already he has killed his first civilians with the faceless, soulless weapons of remote-control mass death. 

What's more, the Commander-in-Chief has already overseen his first mass slaughter of civilians in Afghanistan, the land he calls "the central front in the War on Terror," where he plans to commit tens of thousands of more troops in a massive escalation of a war that his new Terror War envoy, Richard Holbrooke, now says will last longer than the Vietnam War. As MSNBC reports, none other than the U.S.-installed Afghan president himself, Hamid Karzai, condemned the killing of 16 Afghan civilians, including three children and two women, in a ground-and-air attack by U.S forces on Saturday. Escalating the conflict will mean much more of this, of course. In any case, Karzai's protests will cut no ice with the new regime in Washington; he is yesterday's man, yesterday's puppet, and his increasingly frantic and forthright denunciations of the mass slaughter of his people by American and NATO forces will not be tolerated much longer. Obama and his team are already manipulating the politics of the occupied land to ensure that a "dream ticket" of politicians beholden to Obama, not Bush, will "wrest control away from Mr Karzai," as the Independent reports. 

And why not? Shouldn't the new Caesar be allowed to appoint his own men to govern his dominions?

...

Of course, such things aren't serious. They don't really matter. Why should you waste your beautiful mind on something like that? 

Especially when you can be mesmerized by Obama's amazing "First 100 Hours," when he has already revolutionized American policy by, for example, restricting the overt use of torture to the torture techniques approved of by the Pentagon -- although his own intelligence supremo, Dennis Blair, refuses to say if "waterboarding" should be considered torture, and assures Congress that he will examine "whether certain coercive techniques have been effective"; i.e. which torture techniques should be continued. There is also Obama's bold ordering of the (eventual) closure of the Gitmo camp and the handful of CIA detention center,while leaving alone the Pentagon's numerous and far worse gulag centers -- where thousands of Terror War captives languish without charges, representation, or the slightest legal recourse. And of course, there is his heartening decision to go to court to defend Bush's multiple rape of American liberty: the years-long illegal surveillance scheme, which Obama had voted to support while still in the Senate.

I have a dream

Some BO supporters like to defend his actions up to this point as unfortunate but necessary things he had to do to get the power, and they dream that once he's sworn in he'll abandon the principles he's clearly expressed and do what he truly believes is right, which of course is the same thing they believe is right. I share this dream.

I dream that starting today:

• The US will immediately begin a complete widthdrawl from Iraq and Afghanistan.
• The US will stop its unconditional support for Israeli state violence, will stop supplying the weapons used to terrorize Palestinians, and will support a 2-state solution with the 1967 borders.
• War criminals will be prosecuted: all of them, including former Presidents and executive branch leaders, Congressional leaders, and military leaders.
  
• The US will stop violating international law, will give up its UN Security Counsel Veto, and follow World Court rulings.
• The Federal Reserve will be abolished.
• The US Military empire of bases will begin to be liquidated, troops repatriated and reintegrated into civilian life, and reparations paid where owed.
• Corporate personhood will be revoked, and measures adopted to eliminate corporate influence on elections.
• The CIA will be dismantled, along with much of the "intelligence" structure.
• The war on (certain kinds of people who use certain kinds of) drugs will end. Non-violent offenders will be released with support. Prohibition on drugs will end.
• Universal health care will be adopted, fully funded by the government.
• A sensible national food plan will be adopted, eliminating subsidies for mass-produced industrial monoculture, and providing extensive support for local, sustainable farming.
• Public mass transit infrastructure and alternative energy, especially renewable sources like solar and wind, will be heavily supported by the federal government, as part of a plan to drastically reduce US carbon emissions.
  

I'd like to see lots of other things, but I'll just leave it there because I believe this list is extremely conservative. It simply says we should follow the law, enact policies supported by the population (sometimes called "democracy"), and act according to very simple moral truisms.

If Obama disavows everything he's said and done so far and gets started on that, I'll gladly join the crowd celebrating his work. I won't even mind if he waits a few years to turn himself in for his own war crimes.

But we all know this is just a dream, and is no closer to being acheived than Dr. King's dream.

McCain advising Obama, ha!

Ha! For all of you lesser-evil supporters of BO evil, how do you feel about this? You voted for BO to keep McCain away from power, right? To make sure he has nothing to do with the important decisions, right? Well now Commander Hope-n-Change is calling McCain every night asking him what to do, almost as if he thinks McCain is likely to have something useful to say.

h/t Chris Floyd

don't fall for it

I managed not to notice that today was MLK day until a friend mentioned it on the phone last night. I'm assuming that Canada doesn't pay attention to this particular day, but I might just be oblivious. Anyway, I thought I'd write something about how feel-good connections between today's commemoration of a heroic human rights advocate and tomorrow's imperial management succession ceremony are full of shit, but, as usual, better bloggers have already done it. So go read them.

Perrin:

God, I hate inaugurations -- a massive commercial for the imperial state, with some "populist" tinsel tossed around to make consumers feel included.

...

No one seems to mind hearing pro-FISA Obama praise Martin Luther King, who was on the other end of government wiretaps.

Schwarz: Works the Same Everywhere


Silber:

But the absolutely overwhelming amount of colossal shit attendant upon this inauguration ("Look, Mom! Barack made me fly!" -- I do not exaggerate even slightly, scroll to about the midpoint of the story) is enough to make anyone who remains remotely sane loathe all mankind throughout all eternity.

update

James: Blast from the past: Commemorating MLK, Jr.

What does it say?

Think about this.

The President and Vice-President of the US openly admit to having committed crimes under domestic and international law. They are criminals under US law and they are war criminals. They ordered wireless surveillance in violation of FISA law, openly admit to having done so, and thus are criminals. They ordered or approved of water-boarding, which is a violation of international law an which the US has previously prosecuted people for doing under torture laws, and thus are war criminals. This can't be controversial because they openly admit it. There's simply no disputing that these are the facts of the situation.

And in response to this, the political elite in the US are unified in their response: Bush and Cheney should not be held responsible for this in any way. They should not be impeached, and they should not be prosecuted. We're talking about the entire US political machinery, not just close party allies of these guys. From the idiot talking heads on TV to the idiots writing op-eds for the major papers, to Nancy "impeachment is off the table" Pelosi, to Barrack "look forward, not backward" Obama, absolutely everyone is lined up on the side of the openly criminal regime. They shall not be punished.

What does that say about the United States?

Strains on this simple observation have been circulating through the blogs I tend to read these days - Silber, Floyd, Greenwald - and if you want me to point you towards particularly well written pieces I'll be happy to do so, but what I've written here is the gist of it. Our highest elected officials are openly criminal, and nobody within the official leadership structures gives a flying fuck.

BO recently commented on Israel's war against humanity in Gaza something to the effect that if someone lobbed rockets at his family, he'd do everything in his power to respond, too. And when asked if Bush should be prosecuted for his crimes, he said we should look forward, not backwards. Can anyone spot the hypocrisy? This is supposed to be the great new progressive hope for America?

What does that say about America?

Bush and Cheney are widely despised. Their approval ratings have been abysmal, and at times polls have shown a majority of Americans in favor of impeachment. And that is without any major leadership on the impeachment issue. Can you imagine how popular a high-profile politician would become by fighting for impeachment? Anyone who did that would instantly gain hero status for huge numbers of people throughout the world. And yet nobody is willing to do this.

What does that say about America?

yes, Obama is the same as Bush

A recent commenter here objected to my likening of BO to Bush, citing BO's "superior moral grounding" as a reason for optimism. Chris Floyd makes a mockery of this argument:

It's true that the United States government is facing a severe and prolonged budget crisis. But what does it say about the underlying moral philosophy of an administration when its first target for budget cuts are programs designed to help ordinary people – including the weakest among us? When it will not cut a penny from a war machine that has only made the nation more and more insecure over the long decades of its ascendancy, involving the American people in an endless series of conflicts in which they have no business, and no genuine national interests at stake? If urgent cuts in government spending are needed, why would you not look first to this gargantuan swamp of waste and corruption and dangerous meddling? Instead, Obama proposes to pour even more money into it, and to increase the dangerous meddling.

The president-elect has made his fundamental priorities clear – for anyone who wants to see them. The war machine and the financial markets will continue to be gorged and comforted in their wonted manner. Programs to help ordinary citizens, programs to enhance the quality of life for individuals and the well-being of society, will be the first – perhaps the only – areas to feel the budget axe. Whatever you may think of the efficacy of such programs, this ordering of priorities -- war and profits over people -- bespeaks the same depraved sensibility that has prevailed for generations in Washington. It is the same old rancid swill in a stylish new container.

BO = bo = plagiary!

crispin sartwell is stealing my highly original nomenclature. i'll retaliate by stealing his no caps style!