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"pathetic excuse for a democracy"
Ken Silverstein seems to have had enough:
Wake up, people. There never was an Obama movement. There was merely a rhetorically gifted candidate who inspired a lot of people who should have known better (admittedly, it was easy to believe given the alternatives) and who foisted on to Obama their fondest hopes and desires, which were largely delusional. Now, Obama is disappointing them just as thoroughly as did Bill Clinton, the last candidate liberals stupidly fell in love with, and not just on healthcare but pretty much across the board.
Yes, Obama was the best candidate and yes, he may even accomplish something decent here and there over the next four years. But let’s not talk about an Obama movement, because that’s a fantasy.
What’s sad is how many liberal Obama supporters continue to believe and insist that he’s the real thing. One even hears progressives saying that health care reform would have worked out differently if only Tom Daschle had been confirmed as secretary of health and human services. Yes, Tom Daschle, the Democratic hack, industry advocate and tax cheat would have been able to get through health care reform, maybe even a single payer system.
And you thought the Republicans lived in fantasyland.
more via The Myth of the Obama Movement—By Ken Silverstein (Harper’s Magazine).
Max Keiser does a Howard Beale:
Incidentally, Matt Taibbi’s amazing Rolling Stone article on Goldman Sachs is now up on the web in its entirety.
Paul Krugman:
Back during the Democratic primary campaign, Mr. Obama argued that the Clintons had failed in their 1993 attempt to reform health care because they had been insufficiently inclusive. He promised instead to gather all the stakeholders, including the insurance companies, around a “big table.” And that May 11 event was, of course, intended precisely to show this big-table strategy in action.
But what if interest groups showed up at the big table, then blocked reform? Back then, Mr. Obama assured voters that he would get tough: “If those insurance companies and drug companies start trying to run ads with Harry and Louise, I’ll run my own ads as president. I’ll get on television and say ‘Harry and Louise are lying.’ ”
The question now is whether he really meant it.
The medical-industrial complex has called the president’s bluff. It polished its image by showing up at the big table and promising cooperation, then promptly went back to doing all it can to block real change. The insurers and the drug companies are, in effect, betting that Mr. Obama will be afraid to call them out on their duplicity.
It’s up to Mr. Obama to prove them wrong.
Re the last paragraph, it’s been evident since day one that the TSA is run by the same people who leave comments on YouTube videos.
Poland’s Krystian Zimerman, widely regarded as one of the finest pianists in the world, created a furor Sunday night in his debut at Walt Disney Concert Hall when he announced this would be his last performance in America because of the nation’s military policies overseas.
Before playing the final work on his recital, Karol Szymanowski’s “Variations on a Polish Folk Theme,” Zimerman sat silently at the piano for a moment, almost began to play, but then turned to the audience. In a quiet but angry voice that did not project well, he indicated that he could no longer play in a country whose military wants to control the whole world.
“Get your hands off of my country,” he said. He also made reference to the U.S. military detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
About 30 or 40 people in the audience walked out, some shouting obscenities. “Yes,” he answered, “some people when they hear the word military start marching.”
Others remained but booed or yelled for him to shut up and play the piano. But many more cheered. Zimerman responded by saying that America has far finer things to export than the military, and he thanked those who support democracy.
[snip]
Zimerman has had problems in the United States in recent years. He travels with his own Steinway piano, which he has altered himself. But shortly after 9/11, the instrument was confiscated at JFK Airport when he landed in New York to give a recital at Carnegie Hall. Thinking the glue smelled funny, the TSA decided to take no chances and destroyed the instrument. Since then he has shipped his pianos in parts, which he reassembles by hand after he lands. He also drives the truck himself when he carries his instrument from city to city over land, as he did after playing a recital in Berkeley on Friday.
[more] via Krystian Zimerman’s shocking Disney Hall debut | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times.
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