Hating on Obama, return of the repressed edition
I said I would lay off Barack Obama until he did something specific to piss me off. Oh baby.
I don't have the patience to rip this apart as I should, and you're all smart enough to be pissed at it without my help. Suffice to say: fuck you, Barack.
Dems 'confused,' Obama writes in latest book
WASHINGTON -- In his new book, dedicated to his mother and maternal grandmother -- the women "who raised me" -- Sen. Barack Obama accuses fellow Democrats of being "confused" as the Democratic Party "has become the party of reaction."
...
"We Democrats are just, well, confused," Obama writes. He goes on. "Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill-conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action.
"In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning."
On Bush, Obama relates two encounters with the president. "Both times I found the President to be a likable man, shrewd and disciplined but with the same straightforward manner that had helped him win two elections."
I don't have the patience to rip this apart as I should, and you're all smart enough to be pissed at it without my help. Suffice to say: fuck you, Barack.
posted by Antid Oto @ 4:08 PM
6 Comments:
At 5:51 PM,
Anonymous said…
WOW. I'd had a cautious optimism about Obama, but those few graphs are more than enough to get me on board the Fuck Obama bandwagon.
This is a similar sort of process I'm currently having w/ LA mayor A.V. I'd initially thought him to be the new face of real progressive leadership. But then once he's in office, it's all about staking out positions that will appeal to his constituency in the next election for higher office.
At 3:20 PM,
Solomon Grundy said…
I haven't been following AV. In what ways has he lurched to the right?
As far as Obama, no surprises here, considering his mentor is Holy Joe.
At 7:58 PM,
Anonymous said…
the two that jump to mind are: making his chief of staff Robin Kramer, who was chief of staff to former (Republican) mayor Riordan; and crossing a picket line a couple weeks back. Also, I'm told by people who work with his office on issues of homelessness that he's way more interested in using that as an issue on which to grandstand than in actually doing anything. he talks a good game about public transportation & housing, but his #1 issue is a school takeover. He's also a huge cheerleader for the "more cops" movement, and he kisses the collective ass of the Jewish community vis a vis Israel.
(Those last two are not noteworthy. Were he, however, the progressive leader we all wanted him to be, they would not have happened.)
I'm sure that Phoebe can either expand on this or tell me that I'm being silly & naive.
At 8:02 PM,
Antid Oto said…
He's also a huge cheerleader for the "more cops" movement
Is that really so bad? I was under the impression that LA had far too few police officers for its size, making it very difficult to implement more liberal-type ideas like community policing. Cities do have to fight crime, and putting more bodies on the streets seems to me like the least pernicious way to do it (as compared to, say, "broken-windows" random street searches and mandatory-minimum sentencing). Of course I don't know the LA details at all, and the details are everything.
At 8:52 PM,
Anonymous said…
yeah, here's where my naivete comes into play. cops are necessary, okay, but no one ever lost an election by calling for increased law & order.
we have a finite amount of public money, and i'd sooner see it spent on housing or transportation than on more cops. (yes, my beef basically boils down to "yo, fuck the po-po." not really the nuanced argt that LBers have come to expect, i know.)
At 2:11 AM,
Josh K-sky said…
Sorry, I don't do local politics blogging. But I agree with AO on the cops thing being benign. Also benign: Beginning the beguine. I am going to write a movieblog post about Shortbus soon!
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