June
9, 2008, Volume 16 Nr. 11, Issue 242
Obamanation
- Jozef Hand-Boniakowski
Barack Obama has declared victory
in the Democratic Party primary. Hillary Clinton suspended
her campaign on June 7, 2008. After a grueling year-and-a-half
of campaigning, this stage of the oppressive election frenzy is over. Obama has won. And so what?
Obama asked no hard questions. Obama provided no solutions.
Obama gave the electorate a preacher’s delivery, a rock
star’s persona, a basketball player’s hand claps. Obama gave
the public what the media programmed them to want:
a feel good candidate delivered via Madison Avenue finesse which they are conditioned to accept. The main stream corporate
media orchestrated the so-called Obama movement as
an acceptable option to the Republicans. The only game allowed,
after all, is the one played by only two teams owned
by the same controlling interests.
Regardless of the candidate
who becomes president, the presiding power in the White House will
remain with the managers and owners of the military industrial
complex. The masters of war will continue manipulating the
masses to do their bidding as they will manipulate Obama who
embraces their imperial tenets. Such is the paradigm into
which the “savior” Obama cometh.
- Obama's big theme is
"change that we can count on". Yet there is
precious little change we have left in our wallets after we fill
up our gas tanks or buy the week's groceries. And what
does presumptive presidential nominee, Barack Obama, offer as a means to ameliorate our pain? Obama offers us
nothing. We are, however, so used to being fed nothing
candidates who offer nothing concrete as solutions,
that when a candidate comes along who does so well we
embrace them. And being offered nothing well beats
being offered something poorly. Ask most Obama
supporters what their candidate's solutions are to any of the
country's pressing problems and you get blank stares.
They may say, "I believe that Obama can solve that
problem". Ask them how? They do not
know.
-
- We support our
politicians with the same mythological fervor that we embrace our
religion. We have faith that a better future is just
beyond this reality. And just as in religion we prefer
our cherished stories over fact until we die. It may
feel good to embrace delusion but It
gets us nowhere. The current
electoral abomination where only corporate
lackeys have any possibility of success is the reality.
The Obama
phenomenon is but the next phase.
-
- Barack Obama is touted as
being the leader for
these times? We have no evidence of his leadership
ability. We do have Obama saying, "I am confident in my ability to
lead". This is hardly reassuring. When
asked about covering the health care uninsured in his first
term, Obama has stated,
Every four years somebody
trots out a white paper, they post it on the Web....But
the question we have to challenge ourselves is do we have
the political will and the sense of urgency to actually
get it done.
Get what done? The
political will to do what? We have no idea. Lack of
substance and ambiguity go hand-in-hand in the Obama campaign.
Robert Fisk, in his article
"The West’s Weapon of Self-Delusion - There are gun
battles in Beirut –- and America thinks things are going fine",
for The Inedpendent/UK writes,
- So they are it again, the
great and the good of American democracy, grovelling and
fawning to the Israeli lobbyists of American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (Aipac), repeatedly allying themselves
to the cause of another country and one that is continuing
to steal Arab land...Barack Obama...found time to
tell his Jewish audience that Jerusalem is the one
undivided capital of Israel, which is not the view of the
rest of the world which continues to regard the annexation
of Arab East Jerusalem as illegal...Israel’s security
comes first and Mr Baracka [sic] wants Israel to keep all of
Jerusalem — so much for the Palestinian state.
Chris Hedges writing in "The
Iran Trap" says of Barack Obama and the Democrats,
Barack Obama, when we need sane
leadership the most, has proved feckless and weak. He, and the
Democratic leadership, is as morally bankrupt as those
preparing to ignite our funeral pyre in the Middle East....He
illustrates how the lust for power is morally corrosive. And
while he may win the White House, by the time he takes power
he will be trapped in George Bush’s alternative reality.
- Bold new leadership, indeed, Mr.
Obama.
-
- Voting For
Someone Else
-
- I will be voting for Ralph
Nader. Ralph Nader's platform is clear. Nader offers
concrete steps presenting solutions such as single payer universal health
care, ending the war in Iraq, peace in Palestine/Israel,
etc. Very importantly, Nader demands that the perpetrators of the
crimes of the Bush administration be
brought to justice. Obama avoids the issue of
impeachment. Like Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Obama
has no interest in enforcing the U.S. Constitution and
bringing the criminals to justice. As
Nader puts it,
- This is the most impeachable
Presidency in American history....These are defiant,
continual, recidivistic war criminals, constitutional
criminals and statutory criminals. They should have been
immediately impeached and convicted in the Senate the
moment the Democrats took over. But, the Democrats have
taken impeachment off the table. Barack Obama has taken it
off the table, Hillary Clinton has taken it off the table,
and of course John McCain doesn’t want it on the
table.”
Obama tells us that the Bush
administration is made up of a "variety of
characters" with "loose ethical
standards". Obama further states that, "I
think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breaches, and
intentional breaches of the president's
authority". Breaches? No.
Crimes! So then, Mr. Obama, you don't have
enough evidence that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, et al, have committed crimes? How
much more evidence do you need?
- Ralph Nader and Kevin Reese
posted the evidence for impeachment on May 31, 2005 on the
website Boston.com
Nader and Reese asked the questions to which affirmative
answers necessitate impeachment,
- Did the administration
mislead us into war by manipulating and misstating
intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction and
alleged ties to Al Qaeda, suppressing contrary
intelligence, and deliberately exaggerating the danger a
contained, weakened Iraq posed to the United States and
its neighbors?
The answer to this question is
now, unequivocally, yes. The evidence is in and it is
overwhelming. Obama's ignoring of the facts
that demand impeachment cement his loyalty to the corporate system,
the Party and his candidacy over the United States
Constitution. This is unacceptable. And it
should be unacceptable to the people that make up the
Obamanation. In a letter to Representative John
Conyers regarding impeachment, Ralph Nader wrote,
- It is never too late to
enforce the Constitution. It is never too late to uphold
the rule of law. It is never too late to awaken the
Congress to its sworn duties under the Constitution.
But
it will soon be too late to avoid the searing verdict of
history when on January 21, 2009, George W. Bush becomes a
fugitive from a justice that was never invoked by those in
Congress so solely authorized to hold the President accountable.
- So then, Mr. Obama. So
then, citizens of Obamanation, what do you say? Will you
defend the Constitution? Or are you part of the
abomination that doesn't give a damn about it? I have
answered this question for myself and that is why I am voting for
Ralph Nader.
- ©2008
Jozef
Hand-Boniakowski, PhD
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