By David Swanson
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Obama gave speech after speech promising that ending the war in Iraq would be his first act in office: "I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank."
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Candidate Obama swore he would not rewrite laws with signing statements. He promised huge advances in transparency and openness. He promised support for whistleblowers. He would fix NAFTA, not duplicate it in more countries. The Bush tax cuts would end. A President Obama would not launch a war without Congress. Obama Version .08 was a horrible, horrible candidate, and yet he made dozens of promises that have been tossed aside, making him now even worse -- unless one chooses to accept as credible the same promises again.
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Obamapologists will tell you about good intentions and Republican resistance in Congress, and yet Obama came in with a large Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, and a Democratic leadership in the Senate willing to circumvent the filibuster-everything-60-vote-requirement when and only when it chose to, and chose to do what Obama instructed. Obama met in secret with the health insurance big whigs and insisted that the healthcare bill not include even a token pretense of a movement away from their control. Now who's getting "taken to the bank"?
By September 2009 it was clear enough, even pre-Peace Prize, where President Obama was heading. I then wrote an article called "Bush's Third Term." It still accurately describes the state of the promise of Obama and of Obama's forgotten promises.
...
Obama gave speech after speech promising that ending the war in Iraq would be his first act in office: "I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank."
...
Candidate Obama swore he would not rewrite laws with signing statements. He promised huge advances in transparency and openness. He promised support for whistleblowers. He would fix NAFTA, not duplicate it in more countries. The Bush tax cuts would end. A President Obama would not launch a war without Congress. Obama Version .08 was a horrible, horrible candidate, and yet he made dozens of promises that have been tossed aside, making him now even worse -- unless one chooses to accept as credible the same promises again.
...
Obamapologists will tell you about good intentions and Republican resistance in Congress, and yet Obama came in with a large Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, and a Democratic leadership in the Senate willing to circumvent the filibuster-everything-60-vote-requirement when and only when it chose to, and chose to do what Obama instructed. Obama met in secret with the health insurance big whigs and insisted that the healthcare bill not include even a token pretense of a movement away from their control. Now who's getting "taken to the bank"?
By September 2009 it was clear enough, even pre-Peace Prize, where President Obama was heading. I then wrote an article called "Bush's Third Term." It still accurately describes the state of the promise of Obama and of Obama's forgotten promises.
Oh, you're just a hater!
ReplyDeleteNot me. I'm an Obama supporter. It's that Swanson guy.
ReplyDelete