Today's Stories

October 9-11, 2009

James Bovard
Eight Years of Big Lies on Afghanistan

October 8, 2009

Saul Landau
A Late September Morning With Fidel

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Dark Omens for the US in Afghanistan

Linn Washington, Jr.
Pot and Perversion: Judicial Antics Expose Drug War Insanity

Marshall Auerback
Neo-Classical Economics Misses What Matters

Dave Lindorff
A Nation of Snoops

David Rosen
Bankrupt Morality: the Staying Power of Republican Sinners

Chris Darimont / Misty MacDuffee
The Bear Essentials: New Thinking Needed to Save BC's Salmon and Grizzlies

John V. Walsh
Remembering Hinton's Fanshen

Stewart Lawrence
The Edwards / Hunter Affair Reconsidered

Charles R. Larson
Conservatives in the Sandbox

Website of the Day
Et Tu, Code Pink?

October 7, 2009

Brendan Cooney
Are Republicans Breaking US Law in Honduras?

Paul Craig Roberts
Dead Labor: Marx and Lenin Reconsidered

Dean Baker
Bernanke's Recovery: Unemployment Up, Wages Down (But the Banks Have Been Saved ... Sort Of)

Jonathan Cook
A Third Intifada?

John Stanton
HTS: Congress Rewards Failure, Puts Personnel in Harms Way

Joanne Mariner
Tortured Language

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cherry Blossoms

Stephen Lendman
The Gaza War's Effect on Women

Sen. Russell Feingold
Time to Draw Down in Afghanistan

Mary Lynn Cramer
Doublespeak on Health Care

Website of the Day
How to Bag a Wolf by Aerial Assault

October 6, 2009

Mike Whitney
Dollar Hysteria: Is the Sky Really Falling?

Gareth Porter
The Iranian Rift in the IAEA: Leaked Paper Based on Disputed Intel

Jonathan Cook
How Israel Buried the UN's War Crime Probe

Boris Kagarlitsky
My Hour as Talking Head in Moscow

Iain Boal
The New Crisis at Pacifica

Ron Jacobs
Why Are We in Afghanistan?

John Ross
Wave of Anarchist Bombings Strikes Mexico

Michael Dickinson
Panic in Istanbul: Smoke, Mayhem and the World Bank

Stephen Fleischman
Beware the Predator

Ira Glunts
The Audacity of Nope

Missy Beattie
Outside Looking In

Website of the Day
Round Up the Usual Suspects

October 5, 2009

Pam Martens
Wall Street Titans Use Aliases to Foreclose on Families While Partnering with a Federal Agency

Mike Whitney
Dead Man Walking: Welcome to the US Economy

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Feds Imprison the Innocent

Harry Browne
Ireland Says, "Yes, Please"

Sara Mann
My Little Town: Nothin' But the Dead and Dyin'

Omar Barghouti
Dissolve the Palestinian Authority

Shamus Cooke
A Jobless Recovery?

Brenda Norrell
A Dirty New Low for Peabody Coal

Fred Gardner
Situation NORML: Reconciling Medical Pot Use and Legalization

Binoy Kampmark Copenhagen Blues: McChrystal and the Afghan Trap

Website of the Day
In Goldman Sachs We Trust?

October 2-4, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Geezer Renditions

Saul Landau
News From Raul Castro

Diana Johnstone
After the German Elections: Is Socialism Really Dead in Europe?

Greg Moses
Cramming for the Downside

William Blum
The Fall of the Berlin Wall: Another Cold War Myth

Brian Cloughley
Iran's Nuclear Program: Where's the Proof?

Russell Mokhiber
Welcome Back, Michael Moore

John Ross
Chomsky in Mexico

Ellen Brown
IMF Catapults From Shunned Agency to Global Central Bank

David Ker Thomson
Cop Shocks

David Macaray
The Audacity of Toyota

Gary Engler
Unions in a Rut

Robert Fantina
Meet the New Boss (Same as the Old Boss)

Lisa Stolarski / Naomi Archer
Pittsburgh: Still a (Coal) Company Town

Anthony Papa
Here is Your Chance to Help End the Failed War on Drugs

Joe Allen
The Good Wife: Bad View of a Corrupt System

Harry Browne
Tarantino Scalps His Audience

Ron Jacobs
Collective Fiction

Charles R. Larson
Cultural Warriors: Austrialian Aboriginal Art Triennial

David Yearsley
Hanns Eisler's Great National Anthem for East Germany is Available: Make It America's

Poets' Basement
Taylor, Gardner and Landau

Website of the Weekend
Wrongful Convictions of Youth

October 1, 2009

Andy Worthington
A Truly Shocking Gitmo Story

Carl Ginsburg
The Great Marginalization

Mary Lynn Cramer
Seniors on the Chopping Block

Col. Douglas Macgregor
The Bog of History in Afghanistan

Brian M. Downing
The Paradox of Financial Disorder

John V. Walsh
Mao's China at 60

Ramzy Baroud
The Big Diversion

Norman Solomon
Starting Another Year of War in Afghanistan

Dan Bacher
Undamming the Klamath

Brenda Norrell
Lazy Journalists are the Darlings of the Corporations

Website of the Day
Neoliberalism as Water Balloon

September 30, 2009

Vijay Prashad
McChrystal's Afghan Desolation

Gareth Porter
U.S. Story on Iran Nuke Facility Doesn't Add Up

Andy Thayer
The Fiasco Behind Chicago's Olympics Bid

Paul Craig Roberts
Another War in the Works

Dean Baker
Medicare Buy-In: What's Wrong With Giving People a Choice?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Mission Impossible

Laura Flanders
Punch in the Streets, But Not in the Suites

Dave Lindorff
The Baucus Excuse

Seumas Milne
Why British Workers Are Angry

Martha Rosenberg
What Integrity Means to Pfizer

Website of the Day
Why You Should Boycott Hyatt Hotels

September 29, 2009

Marshall Auerback
A Neoliberal Hijacking

Alan Farago
Recovery Without Feeling

Jeff Sher
Shopping for Health Care

Bruce Jackson
60 Minutes and the General

Gareth Porter
Fears of Defeat in Afghanistan

Jonathan Cook
Palestinians in the Israeli Army

Bouthaina Shaaban
Arabs in the International Balance

Dave Lindorff
Looking Under the TARP

Stephen Soldz
Spreading Hysteria About Swine Flu "Hysteria"

Sara Mann
The Party of No Meets the Island of No

Website of the Day
Cosmos, Autotuned

September 28, 2009

Laura Carlsen
The Sound and Fury of the Honduran Coup

Anthony DiMaggio
The U.S., Iran and Nuclear Terror

Paul Craig Roberts
More Lies, More Deceptions

Neve Gordon
On Palestinian Civil Disobedience

Bill Quigley
Street Report From the G20

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's LBJ Moment

Nicola Nasser
Stuck Between Two Failures

Ben Rosenfeld Murder in New Orleans: Remembering Kirsten Brydum

Website of the Day
The Short March

September 25-7, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Ruin of His Presidency

Daniel Wolff
Speculating on Education

Rev. William E. Alberts
How "White Magic" Makes the Ism of Race Disappear

Mike Roselle
Send Lawyers, Guns and Money

Saul Landau
Covert Memories From Miami

Eshan Azari
Why Afghan Intellectuals Live in National Despair

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Pentagon Feedlot

Robert Jensen
Is Obama a Socialist?

Jonathan Cook
Sleeping with the Enemy

Nelson P Valdés
Cuba, Hurricanes and the Internet

David Michael Green
Dumping Dubya

Ramzy Baroud
The Goldstone Report and Israeli Impunity

John V. Whitbeck
The Partition Straightjacket

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trial Delayed ... Again

David Ker Thomson
The Lady Vanishes

Seth Sandronsky
Obama and Race Management

Jim Goodman
Why are Farmers Afraid of Michael Pollen?

Charles R. Larson
From Oppression to Opportunity

David Yearsley
Froberger's Travels

Kim Nicolini
Hardcore Capitalism

Lorenzo Wolff
Transparent Pink

Website of the Weekend
An Emergency Appeal in the Fight Against Big Coal

September 24, 2009

Steven Higgs
Even in Indiana, Doctors Support National Health Insurance

Christopher Brauchli
Death Pays

Marshall Auerback
The Shortfall at the FDIC

Stephanie Westbrook
Italy's Fallen Soldiers

Nadia Hijab
Know Your Dictator

Sen. Russell Feingold
Fixing the Patriot Act, Restoring the Constitution

David Macaray
Goodbye "Norma Rae"

Binoy Kampmark
Curry Bashings in Oz

Joe Allen
Dancing With the Hammer

Website of the Day
The Most Corrupt Members of Congress

September 23, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
The Economy is a Lie, Too

Gabriel Kolko
The United States in Afghanistan: Eight Years Later

Uri Avnery
The Waldorf-Astoria Summit

Shamus Cooke
The First Shots of the Trade War

Missy Beattie
The Sound of Money

Gareth Porter
Taliban Rising

Mark Weisbrot
How Much Repression Will Hillary Clinton Support in Honduras?

Dr. Susan Block
The Murder of Annie Le

Norm Kent
Pot and the Right to Pursue Happiness

Richard Neville
Apocalypse Porno

Website of the Day
In Carver Country

September 22, 2009

Franklin C. Spinney The Huge Hole in Gen. McChrystal's Afghan Counterinsurgency Strategy

Russell Mokhiber
Who's the Pimp?

Greg Grandin
Zelaya's Brazilian Gambit

Nikolas Kozloff
Salvaging Democracy in Honduras Will Be Tricky

John Ross
Mexico Convulsed by Paranoia

Ron Jacobs
Gen. McChrystal's Salespitch

Tariq Ali
The Afghan Folly

Dave Lindorff
NYT Trashes Single-Payer

Harvey Wasserman
Tom Friedman's Idiocy Atomique

Vijay Prashad
Is Anything Better Than Nothing?

Kareem Shora
After the CIA Torture Report

Website of the Day
Did a State Dept Official Sell Nuclear Secrets?

September 21, 2009

JoAnn Wypijewski
Will Trumka or the Steelworkers Push Labor Into Battle?

Carl Finamore
Backstage at the AFL-CIO Convention

Uri Avnery
Sliming Goldstone and His Report

Nikolas Kozloff
Joe Wilson's Immigration Hypocrisy

Paul Simpson, M.D.
Why Your Doctor May Have PTSD

Alan Nasser
New Deal Liberalism Writes Its Obituary

Ray McGovern
CIA Torturers Running Scared

Dave Lindorff
Thoughts on Saving an Old Barn

Lina Thorne
Women, War and Afghanistan

Jeb Sprague
Confronting the G20

Website of the Day
Petition: Save the Yellowstone Grizzly

September 18-20, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
When Gossip Came Back and Our Modern Age was Born

Russell Mokhiber
Meet the Real Death Panels

Mike Whitney
The Post-Bubble Malaise

David Michael Green
Can America be Salvaged?

Jonathan Cook
Boycott Derails Jerusalem Rail Line

Nadia Hijab
Sinking the Goldstone Report

Mark Weisbrot
Recession, Recovery and Reform: Will Anything Change?

Michael Winship
Let's Make a Deal, Beltway Edition

Michael Leonardi
The Nuclear Dump in the Mediterranean Sea

Andy Worthington
The Kuwaiti Who Met Bin Laden

Fred Gardner
The Prohibitionists' Manifesto

David Macaray
What Happens in Congress Stays in Congress

David Rosen
System Failure and the Garrido Case

Jason Mark
Hacking the Sky

Mike Ferner
In Praise of Senator Baucus

Farzana Versey
The Great Indian Rope Trick

Ron Jacobs
Dr. Guillotin and Dr. Faustus: an Interview with Marc Estrin

elin o'Hara slavick
Flags for Hiroshima: Artist's Statement

Gilad Aztmon
Vengeance, Barbarism and Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds

David Yearsley
Mendelssohn as Organ Maestro

Charles R. Larson
Darkness, Dignity and Hope in Liberia

Lorenzo Wolff
Dialing Up The Clash

Website of the Weekend
Meet Your Conservative Movement

September 17, 2009

Joshua Frank
Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler

Brenda Norrell
Cry Me a River: Uranium and Genocide in Indian Country

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis, One Year Later

Pam Martens
The Filmmakers vs. the Capitalists

Franklin Lamb
Palestinian Camps Are Ready to Erupt

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cuban Five: An Insult to Humanity

Jed Bickman
Drone War Over Pakistan

Alan Farago
The Mayor of Coconut Creek Gets Butterflies

Website of the Day
C.R.O.C.

September 16, 2009

Ray McGovern
Torture and Accountability

Stephen Green
America's Strange Health Care Debate

Andy Worthington
Is Bagram Obama's New Secret Prison?

Dean Baker
Short Sellers: the Unsung Heroes of the Financial Crisis

Anthony DiMaggio
Killing the Messenger

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cuban Five: The Unheard Call

Benjamin Dangl
Justice Follows Direct Action

Robin Willoughby
The World Seed Conference: Good for Farmers?

Eric Walberg
EuroPeace, the Sounds of Silence

James Ridgeway
Bring That "Boy" Down

Website of the Day
Baucus' Bogus Bill

September 15, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Real Lesson of Lehman's Fall

Mutadhar al-Zaidi
The Story of My Shoe

Marshall Auerback
Government Spending is the Solution--Not the Problem

Afshin Rattansi
The Deal That Led to the Srebrenica Massacre: Former UN Spokeswoman Fingers Holbrooke and the Clinton Administration

Jonathan Cook
How US Tax Breaks Fund Israeli Settlers

Gareth Porter:
Niger Redux? IAEA Conceals Evidence Iran Nuke Docs Were Forged

Dave Lindorff
Congress Needs More Catcalls

Winslow T. Wheeler
Obama and Pentagon Pork

Franklin Spinney
Bin Laden's Latest Message and the Nuttiness of the War on Terror

Karen Korenoski /
Michael Yates
Up in Wood Smoke: Boulder's Dirty Little Secret

David Macaray
Government Cheese

Susie Day
President Mao-bama's Little Red Primer

Website of the Day
The Cotton Pickin' Truth: the Persistance of Slavery in Mississippi

September 14, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
The Health Care Deceit

M. G. Piety
The Danes Do It (Health Care) Better

Shamus Cooke
Wall Street Under Obama: Bigger and Riskier

Bouthaina Shaaban
Three Faces and a Homeland

Alvaro Huerta
In Defense of the Undocumented: Immigrants and Health Care

John Ross
Mexico Loses Its History

Harvey Wasserman
The Supreme Court and Corporate Money

Adam Federman
The Plight of the Bumblebee

Stephen Fleischman
The Federal Twist

Robert Jensen
Can Journalism Schools be Relevant in a World on the Brink?

Website of the Day
The Origin of Sex Offender Registries

September 11-13, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Big Speech: Math Trumps Rhetoric

JoAnn Wypijewski
Trumka Takes Over AFL-CIO

Carl Ginsburg
The Patient as Profit Center

Leonard Peltier
I am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now

Franklin Lamb
Ted Kennedy's Changing Take on Israel

Benjamin Dangl
Throwing Bullets at Failed Policies

Mike Whitney
How to Fight Deflation

John Berger
In Search of Antonello

Saul Landau
Watergate and Modern Scandals

Russell Mokhiber
Disgraceful Democrats

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Pryor's Judgment

Felice Pace
NPR's Linda Gradstein Has Done It Again on Gaza

Jordan Flaherty
The Battle Over Discriminatory Housing Laws in New Orleans

Ron Jacobs
It's Time to be Impolite About Afghanistan

David Macaray
The Utility of Boycotts

David Correia
Welcome to the Business-Friendly Carpenter's Union

Robert Bryce
Wind Turbines and Bird Kills

Christopher Brauchli
Defenders of the Classroom

Paul Krassner
Aha! A Few Words About the 9/11 Truth Movement

Charles R. Larson
Deracination

Kim Nicolini
"Extract:" An Exercise in Economic Realism

David Yearsley
Tall Buildings: the Sound and the Silence

Lorenzo Wolff
In Defense of the One Hit Wonder

Poets' Basement
McEnteer and Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Pizarchik: the Wrong Choice

September 10, 2009

Joshua Frank
Inside Hanford's B Reactor: a Tour of the World's Most Toxic Nuclear Site

Dean Baker
Bernanke's Bad Money

Brian M. Downing
The State of U.S. National Security

Franklin C. Spinney
Portrait of an Afghan Firefight: Up Close and Personal

Andy Worthington
No Escape From Guantánamo

Chase Madar
Samantha Power and the Weaponization of Human Rights

Farzana Versey
A Tale of Two Slums

Ronnie Cummins
Whole Foods, Fair Trade and Organics

Binoy Kampmark
Health Care, Obama and the System

Timothy Lebrón
The Conservative Case for Health Care Reform

Charles R. Larson
A Solution to the Health Care Dilemma

Website of the Day
The Debtor's Revolt Begins!

September 9, 2009

Richard Neville
Trigger-Happy in Afghanistan

Melissa Checker
Double Jeopardy: Carbon Offsets and Human Rights Abuses

Nadia Hijab
Settling for ... Settlements?

Robert Weissman
The Stakes at the Supreme Court

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Arabs Call for General Strike

Russell Mokhiber
Pollan, Mackey, Whole Foods and Single Payer

James Ridgeway
The Dotty Factor: Will Demented Geezers Wreck the Economy?

Richard W. Behan
Obama's Imperative in Afghanistan

James McEnteer
The Photo and the Secretary: How to Appall Robert Gates

Martha Rosenberg
Hatchery Horrors

Website of the Day
Belmondo Verité

September 8, 2009

Henry A. Giroux
The Corporate Stranglehold on Education

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Accused of War Crimes Opposes Investigations

John Ross
Rituals of the Absurd

Jeff Leys
Health Care vs. Warfare: the Future of the Afghan War

Mike Whitney Ashcroft: Repugnant to the Constitution

Shamus Cooke
Obama's Empty Labor Day Speech

Ellen Brown
Did Lehman Brothers Fall or Was It Pushed?

Norman Solomon Men With Guns: In Kabul and Washington

Deepak Tripathi
The Axis of Evil and the Great Satan

Laray Polk
Personality Cults, Indoctrination and Inculcation

Charles R. Larson
Just Who Does He Think He Is?

Website of the Day
The President is Not a Guidance Counselor

September 7, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Obama's Mistakes in Health Care Reform

Bouthaina Shaaban
In Praise of Admiral Mullen

David Macaray
Obama's Labor Day Report Card

Paul Craig Roberts
Indefensible Nation

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Ads Warn Against Marrying Non-Jews

Conn Hallinan
Brazil Flexes Its Muscles

Walter Brasch
The Origins of Labor Day, the Unknown Holiday

Mark Weisbrot
IMF Gives Honduran Government $175 Million

Carl Finamore
China's Birthday Stimulation

C. G. Estabrook
Advance Text of Obama's Big Speech

Website of the Day
One Down, 20,000 to Go

September 4-6, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Deeper Into the Tunnel

Carl Ginsburg
Saving New Orleans' Charity Hospital

Jonathan Cook
The Missing Link in Israeli Organ Theft?

George Wuerthner
The Unintended Consequences of Wolf Hunting

Marc Levy
The Bling They Curse and Carry

Ray McGovern
Holbrooke's Afghan Benchmark

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
It Happened in Miami

Joe Paff
Organizing the Mission

Gareth Porter
Taliban's Tank-Killing Bombs Came From CIA, Not Iran

Devin Beaulieu
Scaremongering About Bolivia and Islam

Anthony Papa
Why Leslie Crocker Snyder Should Not Become New York City's New DA

David Ker Thomson
Love and Dekes in Utopia

Don Fitz
The Case of the Biodevastation 7: What the Police Won't Apologize For

Lee Sustar /
S. Sepehri
The Fallout From Iran's Elections

Jim Goodman
Why Honor Organized Labor?

Wajahat Ali
Domestic Crusaders: Making Muslim American Theater

Ron Jacobs
Agitator Journalism: Remembering Ramparts

Helen Redmond
The Lion Sleeps Tonight: the Crimes and Misdemeanors of Teddy Kennedy

John V. Walsh
Obama to Cindy Sheehan: Get Lost

Charles R. Larson
Mandanipour's Masterpiece: Censoring an Iranian Love Story

Mark Scaramella
Ho-Bleeping-Hum: a Few Well-Chosen Words About Valerie Plame's Book

David Yearsley
Cameron Carpenter's Amazing Organ Transplants

Ben Sonnenberg
Hooking, Breaking Friendships, Cross-Dressing and, Above All, Delphine Seyrig

Poets' Basement
Davies, Orloski and Bready

Website of the Weekend
Architectural Semiotics with Glenn Beck

September 3, 2009

Marcus Rediker
Inside Auburn Prison

Ron Jacobs
Embedded With the Taliban

Mike Whitney
How Bad Will It Get?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Untold Story of the Cuban Five: Indictment À La Carte

Saul Landau
Moby Dick and Asian Typhoons

Anat Matar
Israeli Academics Must Pay a Price to End Occupation

Tanya Golash-Boza
How Immigration Enforcement is Weakening National Security

Dave Lindorff
Which Side Are You On?

Andy Worthington
The Story of Gitmo's Two Syrians

Website of the Day
Plundering Appalachia

September 2, 2009

John Ross
Mexico's Plagues

Vijay Prashad
Hey Ram, the Things the Financial Times Group Does!

Rev. Jim Rigby
Why is Universal Health Care "Un-American"?

Joanne Mariner
What the Inspector General Found

Missy Beattie
Hejira: At Martha's Vineyard with Cindy Sheehan

Soren Ambrose
Multilateral Money

Diane Farsetta
Water: the Newest Wave of Corporate "Social Responsibility"

Nadia Hijab
Mulling Mullen's Message

Shamus Cooke
How to Lower the Deficit Without Killing Social Security

Charles R. Larson
Is Dick Cheney Running Scared?

Website of the Day
Inside the Egg Hatchery

September 1, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Wolf at Trout Creek

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Not Sanctions for Israel?

Mark T. Harris
The Whole Foods Boycott: It's About More Than CEO Hypocrisy

Dean Baker
Bank Profits Are Up: Did You Hear Anyone Say, "Thank You"?

Jeffrey Buchanan
Ending the Human Rights Crisis in KatrinaRitaVille

Robin Mittenthal
A Sea of Monocrops: Old MacDonald Never Had a Farm Like This

Ellen Brown
Mercury Mischief

Martha Rosenberg
Vytorin Marketing is Back

Website of the Day
Crazy Town Hall Protester Interviews

Weekend Edition
October 9-11, 2009

Hanging Out with Barry

A Hapless Presidency

By DAVID MICHAEL GREEN

It takes a real artist to render a crushing majority into a hapless political object.

And Barack Obama is a real artist.

He’s had quite an impressive week.  At least for an anvil.

Here’s one New York Times headline, regarding the Olympics debacle:  “Chicago Is Rejected in First Round of Voting”.  Impressive.

Here’s another: “Jobless Report Is Worse Than Expected; Rate Rises to 9.8%”.  Can you say “Bye-bye, Barack”?

Ah, but he was actually just warming up.  David Paterson, the governor of New York, bitch-slapped the president for being stupid enough to lean on Paterson to get out of the 2010 race.  Paterson is a disaster as governor, and Obama is worried that he’ll drag down the Democratic ticket, lowering the president’s majorities in Congress.

The first problem with that calculus is that there are fifty states in the union, notwithstanding the natural arrogance of New Yorkers who tend to think they own the planet.  The Democratic Party’s problems are far bigger than New York.  They begin on one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and end on the other.  As usual, most voters will be using the mid-term elections as a gut-check on their feelings about the current government.  If the inept, cowardly and inert Mr. Obama needs someone to resign in order to save the party, that dude in the mirror with the big ol’ grin would be the most efficacious choice.  Charlie Cook is now giving the Democrats only a fifty-fifty chance of retaining their majority in the House, which is now a whopping 79 seats.  Man, you have to really work at it to blow something that badly in nine months time.

The second problem with asking Paterson to step out of the race to save Democratic majorities in Congress is that Obama has them already, in lopsided amounts, and he’s not doing a damn thing with them.  Instead of kicking some butt to line his own caucuses up and forcing them to pass some real serious legislation that the president demands (see Bush, George W, for illustration.  Also, Reagan, Ronald W.;  Johnson, Lyndon B.;  and Roosevelt, Franklin R.), this fool is doing deals with Republicans who are trying to destroy him, and the very predatory industries that are precisely the problem with American healthcare.  I guess he must think that the GOP is just kidding.  You know, like they were with Clinton.  In any case, why worry about maintaining your majority if you have no intention of ever actually using it?

And the last reason that Obama is idiotic for meddling in state and local politics is because he was sent to Washington to save the country from the sixteen or so serious crises his predecessor bequeathed him, and about all he has going for him is the good will of the public who gave him the job.  Spending your time dicking around with who should be the Democratic Party’s nominee for municipal dog-catcher is not exactly what people had in mind when they gave him this mandate.  By going to Europe to beg for the Olympics, or by immersing himself in local politics, this chump is spending his political capital at a furious pace.  It wouldn’t even be worth the effort if he was getting what he was asking for.  But of course it’s far worse that both Paterson and the IOC slammed the door in his face, as publicly and as emphatically as imaginable.  If Obama taped a “kick me” sign to his back, he could hardly signal any better his ineptitude and his willingness to get rolled at every conceivable opportunity.

There’s more, of course.  Another headline reports that “Panel Finishes Work on Health Bill Amendments”.  The public option, already a weak sister to any real reform of the predatory wealth extraction system masquerading as national healthcare, was of course voted down by the Senate Finance Committee referred to in the title.  Obama has yet to seriously weigh in on any preferences he might have.  Apparently he is going to wait until the end of the legislation process.  Assuming that he actually has any preferences – and I don’t, unless you count carrying water for corporate power and Wall Street – how astonishingly stupid is that as a strategy?  After all the grief and months of effort Congress has gone through to maybe produce a bill, is it conceivable that they’d want to entertain some major new change at the last minute?

Then there’s Afghanistan, where the president has his own general running around painting him into a policy corner with only one option.  Any military guy who tried that under Bush got summarily cashiered, even though they were actually telling the truth.  You know, like maybe 160,000 GIs weren’t gonna be sufficient to occupy a country of 25 million pissed-off Iraqis.  Say that and your career was over, Shinseki-style.

Is anyone else sensing a pattern here?

Obama would make a great nineteenth century president.  You know, all those guys with names you can never remember, because they pretty much didn’t really do anything?  Back in those days, Congress was king, and presidents – except during wartime – were essentially glorified clerks, executing the Congressional will, as per their Constitutional duty.  That’s certainly one way to do it.  It’s just that it pretty much isn’t what people have come to want and expect for the last century or so.  And it sure as hell isn’t what Obama promised in the election.

But he has really specialized in being an acted-upon object, rather than a political protagonist, despite possessing the most powerful position in the world, commanding majorities in Congress, an initially adoring public wishing him tons of good will, and all manner of crises to warrant if not demand bold action.  In his reticence he is not only carrying forward a fine Democratic Party tradition of recent decades, but in fact refining it into an art form.  The pattern works like this:  Republicans charge like bulls through china shops and grab the mantle of power, proceeding then to ram their program through, no matter the casualties.  When they reach levels of greed, corruption and failure so excessive that even comatose Americans can no longer stand it, some effete Democratic stooge named Carter or Clinton or Obama is called in to hold down the fort long enough for the regressives to regroup and start the cycle again.  But Obama in action – better rendered as ‘Obama’s inaction’ – makes Clinton look like a litter full of Mike Tysons crammed into an overheated pressure chamber by comparison.

It’s astonishing how Democrats can never seem to block anything the hard-right wants to do, even when they have majorities, while the GOP kills everything the Democrats supposedly want, even with minuscule minorities in Congress.  Gee, one could almost get the impression that Democrats don’t really want anything much different from Republicans, but just have to adopt a different alt-persona to hide their intentions from the public.  Republicans use guns, god, gays and Gaddafi as distractions from corporate looting.  Democrats strap on their cardigan sweaters and try really, really hard to do something, but gosh-darned it, just never seem to get anywhere.

As for our friend Mr. Obama, he seems busy unlearning every lesson of the last three decades.  He doesn’t appear worried that the right will challenge his legitimacy as president ‘cause, of course, they never did that to Carter or Clinton.  He doesn’t seem worried that they’ll happily destroy the country if necessary in order to wreck his presidency because, of course, there’s little precedent for that.  He doesn’t much care to use the bully pulpit and strong-arm Congress to get what he wants because, of course, that never got Reagan or Bush anywhere.

I can’t believe I’d ever say this, but the question Obama should be asking right about now, is “What would Bush do?”

I’ll tell ya what.  He’d jam his legislation down the throats of the other party, putting the fear of god in them if they dared to oppose the emperor.  He’s rip people’s lungs out and stuff them back through their eye sockets if they looked at him cross-eyed.  He’d lie to members of his own party and carpet bomb their entire home neighborhoods if they dared vote against him.  If any media talking head didn’t tell the lies they were programmed to speak, he’d kidnap their kids and send them to Gitmo, treating them a good waterboarding for every one of their birthdays.  And, he’d call in Rove to stomp some people good, the nice Republican way.

What would that look like?  Here’s journalist Ron Suskind relating an inside taste of what he observed while waiting outside the Ol’ Karl’s office for an interview, back when he was running the White House political operation:  “Rove was talking to an aide about some political stratagem in some state that had gone awry and a political operative who had displeased him.  I paid it no mind and reviewed a jotted list of questions I hoped to ask.  But after a moment, it was like ignoring a tornado flinging parked cars.  ‘We will fuck him.  Do you hear me?  We will fuck him.  We will ruin him.  Like no one has ever fucked him!’  As a reporter, you get around—curse words, anger, passionate intensity are not notable events—but the ferocity, the bellicosity, the violent imputations were, well, shocking.  This went on without a break for a minute or two.  Then the aide slipped out looking a bit ashen, and Rove, his face ruddy from the exertions of the past few moments, looked at me and smiled a gentle, Clarence-the-Angel smile.  ‘Come on in.’  And I did.  And we had the most amiable chat for a half hour.”

Why won’t Obama do this?  Why won’t he unleash all the powers at his disposal, knock heads together, and smash political opponents to smithereens in order to get his way?  Two reasons.  First, he wasn’t a complete personal screw-up for the last half century, acknowledged even by his own parents to be a total embarrassment.  He therefore doesn’t have the burning need to show the world they’ve been wrong about him his whole life, like a certain other fellow recently seen roaming the halls of the West Wing.

The other reason is that Obama doesn’t actually appear to be doing anything that requires any particular toughness.  He’s not trying to sell a bullshit war or dismantle Social Security, like Bush.  He’s not trying to end legal and institutional racism in a country where it was as pervasive as bibles in ‘Bama, like Lyndon Johnson did.  He’s not attempting to bring the country kicking and screaming into the twentieth century, even after it was already one-third over, like FDR was.

In fact, he doesn’t really appear to be doing much of anything, including producing the much-vaunted ‘change’ we heard endlessly about during last year’s campaign.  Unless, of course, you count the nice demeanor with which he continues the predatory policies of Reagan, Clinton, and the Bushes.  This is essentially George W. Bush’s third term.  It’s Barry in the Bush with Smiles.

Obama more or less just seems to want to hang for a while, passively swaying in whatever winds happen to be blowing through at the moment.  That might have worked in the 1950s, or even the 1970s, but not today.  The brownshirts of the American right have been playing for keeps for some time now.  And, while it’s true that they can be their own worst enemy in normal times, these are hardly normal times.  Failing to address the real economic pain people are feeling, failing to provide remotely meaningful healthcare reform, failing to clean-up the corporate predators slamming the public with bad mortgages, sky-high credit card interest rates and bailouts of the already rich – all of these are an invitation for some change Obama can believe in, especially in 2012.  If he insists on being a political object, the right will gladly turn him into one.  It will be a freakin’ anvil too, not the fifth face on Mount Rushmore.

This is not kid’s stuff.  These mobsters are possessed of insatiable greed, and they are clever beyond belief at mobilizing the anxieties and inadequacies of a public already dumbed-down to a level of political immaturity that can barely keep pace with the amped-up fires of their personal rage to which it’s dangerously coupled.  How many re-run episodes of this mini-series do we need to see before we get clear on how it turns out?

The right is wrong on nearly everything, of course – the elites because they lie, and the shock troops because they’re frightened of their own shadows and therefore find blessed relief in every possible palliative from the pope to Palin.  But they are correct about Obama being a complete patsy.  They like to bring that up in the foreign policy context, because it’s good for scaring voters, and because it doesn’t remind moderates of just who is actually rolling this punk here at home (a very fine example of which was provided by the cheers that went up from our nice super-patriots when America lost the Olympics bid).  But the truth is that a movement that should have been discredited to the point of annihilation by its very own actions is now instead setting the agenda in Washington, and the guy who won the landslide seems busy trying to push the mud back up the hill so that he can be buried by it himself, instead of the people who pretty much literally want to kill him.

I really don’t know what to say or think about this dude anymore.  The way democracy is supposed to work is that his desire to hold office and the public’s preference for certain policies should reinforce each other and impel us toward a mutually satisfying presidency.  Instead, though, he trucks along seemingly oblivious to the fact that the exact opposite is occurring.

This country is sinking in every way imaginable, and he will be held to blame in 2010 and 2012.

And so he should be.

It’s just that that will also mean the return of the monster set, absolutely foaming at the mouth after four years in the wilderness not holding the presidency to which they believe they’re fully entitled to own.

And then Obama will join Clinton, running around the world making speeches and writing books.  Maybe they’ll even do joint appearances.

Thanks for that, Barack.  You’re a real patriot.

Oh well.  At least you got the important stuff right.

You won’t have ruffled any feathers while being president.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.  He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond.  More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.

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