Friday, November 25, 2016

No, I Don't Retract - Hate Mail

I won't take back a word of my criticism of Barack Obama, if anything I'd say that a Democratic president who entered office with his Republican predecessor having allowed the oligarchs to blow up the economy, stealing the life savings and security of millions of Americans BUT WHOSE ADMINISTRATION, IN EIGHT YEARS, PUT NONE OF THE BIGGEST CROOKS IN HISTORY IN PRISON is the definition of a failed Democratic president.    If Barack Obama had gone after the oligarchic gangsters and jailed them and oversaw breaking up the banks and other financial institutions which are the primary vehicles of that massive theft, Democrats would have been the heroes of America instead of having been cheated out of office.

Barack Obama has done little to nothing to really reform the corrupt American system, the little that he did, the little that was done by Congress in the first two years of his administration, before the Republicans took back the congress as a result of Barack Obama's failure and refusal to lead or even really talk to the American People.  He chose to be aloof, he chose to be unassertive, he chose to be a weak president when he had played a strong politician, successfully, during his 2008 campaign and, again in 2012.   He was lucky in both elections by having a weak Republican nominee, but the American People elected him as a leader and instead they got what he was willing to give them.

I think one of the emblematic events of Brack Obama's presidency was that the great and strong public servant, Elizabeth Warren started working to build the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau within his administration, was denied the leadership of that bureau, being as undercut by members of Obama's administration as she was Republicans and left to run and win the Senate Seat she holds where she has had to, repeatedly, attack people who Obama appointed to do those things.  One thing I really wish I knew it was who told her that she had to hire Leonard Chanin for that agency over her reservations because she knew he had been among the worst of those responsible for failing to prevent and who, in fact, facilitated the collapse of the economy in 2008.  I can imagine who in the Obama administration - the MEN he listened to instead of Elizabeth warren, would have likely been the ones she referred to.   I strongly suspect that that other supposed genius, Lawrence Summers, was one of them.  He's the man who, after having to leave his administration due to his continued incompetence and arrogance was reported to be the man who Obama wanted to head the Federal Reserve.  That is even given his disastrous track record of administering the finances of Harvard that Garrison Keillor noted in his 2009 Christmas column I linked to the other day.

And that's not even getting to the failure of his Attorneys General,  Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch in that area and many others.

Barack Obama will go down as a failed president because he chose to be a weak president.  He chose to maintain his persona of a cool, aloof intellectual who, on occasion, could pull off skits of him having the common touch.

I voted for him twice but it was not because I expected much more than we got from him, it was because the alternative would be a disaster on the George W. Bush - Dick Cheney level.   I didn't especially favor him in the primaries of 2008, I thought Hillary Clinton was a better candidate with a better record, though I would certainly have rather had other choices then.   I do think that Hillary Clinton would have been a far, far better president than Barack Obama has been, she is more than his intellectual equal and she has few of the typical male ego problems that have been a real detriment through the history of only male American presidents.  SHE CERTAINLY HAS NONE OF HIS CO-DEPENDENCY HANGUPS ABOUT REPUBLICAN APPROVAL.   The corruption built into the system through the Constitution kept that from happening.  I doubt the investigations into likely corruption of the vote in states such as Ohio and Michigan will overturn the obviously corrupted election of the most corrupt, interest conflicted and sleazy man to have ever been handed the presidency while losing the vote.

Donald Trump is a result of the failures of Barack Obama as much as it is the corruption of our media and the corrupt Constitution and Supreme Courts we are governed by.   If he will benefit from nostalgia for his term in office as compared to the Trump disaster is hardly a safe bet.  In many ways Bill Clinton was a more successful president, though that was mostly due to the chance timing of the tech bubble.  And he's seldom remembered fondly as compared to what came after, today.

Barack Obama was not a total disaster like the alternatives or his predecessor, but he was hardly a success.  We needed him to be a success, his refusal to get down and fight hard, putting pressure on recalcitrant Democrats and putting the screws to Republicanfascists is the reason he wasn't.   The last thing we need is another handsome, smart, cool guy as a Democratic president, we're voting for a President, not the next embodiment of 007.

If Democrats voting in primaries in 2020 will learn anything from putting their trust in Barack Obama is doubtful, though that's what we need for them to understand.   Looking at his administration nostalgically or in anything but 20 20 vision in the hard light of the burning country and world will not get us out of this.  That's why I wrote that piece you hated so much and why I wrote this.

Update:  The Boston Globe, today, has a piece whining about how Harvard is likely to be "frozen out as the source of personnel for a Trump regime as it was one of the major sources for the Obama administration.

When President Obama needed to stock his administration, there was one place he could reliably turn to for talent: his alma mater, Harvard University.

Lawrence Summers, who was a top economic aide, Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court justice, Ashton Carter, the defense secretary, and Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, are among a long list of Harvard faculty members summoned to Washington by Obama.

But now that Donald Trump is taking over the White House, Harvard, the ultimate insiders’ club, could find itself in an unfamiliar position: frozen out.

Between Larry Summers whose widely touted genius is something I don't see in his CV other than that he's gotten a lot of suckers to believe in it and Elena Kagan who seems to think one of her major duties on the Court is to recuse herself in ways that I doubt many if any others have ever felt it necessary to do, it makes me wish he'd tapped the talent from more land grant universities.   I could go on and on with why the Ivy League product has been tried and found disastrously wanting.

Before my most ignorant trolls can bring it up,  as I've pointed out before, Elizabeth Warren is a product of public schools and universities including Rutgers.   Being absolutely brilliant she was snapped up by Harvard.  While she may have been hired by the Harvard set, she has proven over and over again that she is not by or for the Harvard class of society.

I'd give a link but you'll have to pay to read the whole thing and it's not especially informative.

Update:  Simples is upset that I've dissed the prep-school->Ivy League->high income professional class.   As I recall it was me doing that about seven years ago at the blog of that product of the lesser Ivys (as Harvard boy Ted Cruz would have put it) Brown, Baby Blue, that first got the Simels ire up.

For my part, looking at the enormous numbers of Ivy League and Might as Well be Ivy league people who are the stewards of corruption in everything from the media, to finance, to industry, to the government, they are the real indigenous criminal class of the United States.

Update 2:  Apparently Simps has the idiots of Eschaton duped into thinking that what I wrote was from a Republican point of view.   Which shows another of his habits, distorting what was said by closely clipping it. They never bother reading stuff before they gas about it at the ol' "Brain Trust" (yeah, some of them really do call it that), it's why Duncan stopped going through the motions of doing more than getting money from his geezer chat room.

As a commenting community of some blogs ages and enters a eutrophic condition, there are often symptoms of oxygen deprivation.  Baby Blue is blue in the lips and fingers from that.

5 comments:

  1. "Donald Trump is a result of the failures of Barack Obama as much
    as it is the corruption of our media and the corrupt Constitution and
    Supreme Courts we are governed by."

    Oh, I think the rank racism, homophobia, sexism and anti-Semitism of your beloved white Christian Americans had more than a little to do with it, Sparkles.

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  2. "Hillary Clinton would have been a far, far better
    president than Barack Obama has been..., she has few of the typical male ego problems that have been a
    real detriment through the history of only male American presidents."

    OBJECTION! ASSUMES HORSESHIT NOT IN EVIDENCE!!!

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  3. "I think in Barack Obama we got a president who would never, no matter what, transgress the boundaries of his class, the prep-school, Ivy League, high-income professional class. "

    Damn, that Obama -- another Ivy League legacy.

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  4. "Simples is upset that I've dissed the prep-school->Ivy League->high income professional class. As I recall it was me doing that about seven years ago at the blog of that product of the lesser Ivys (as Harvard boy Ted Cruz would have put it) Brown, Baby Blue, that first got the Simels ire up."

    Let's see -- Sparky thinks I'm upset that he dissed Ivy League shit because I totally don't give a shit about Ivy League shit.

    THAT'S LOGIC!!!

    ReplyDelete