Victoria Brownworth » iraq

Progressives Cannot Re-Elect Obama in 2012

victoria — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:13:17 +0000

It’s no longer political heresy to say it: No true progressive can vote for President Obama in 2012.
The answers to the question “Why not?” are myriad. The answers are also acutely frustrating for those of us who waited eight years for a Democrat in the White House and worked hard to get one elected, only to discover that Barack Obama is not only no hope and change candidate, but simply–and regrettably–a more eloquent, intelligent, duplicitous and damaging version of George W. Bush.
I have a few friends who will put their fingers in their ears and start humming loudly when I say this, but facts are facts and true progressives cannot afford to ignore them.
All the liberal lock-step arguments are valid up to a point: It’s true that Obama was elected at a time when the economy was on a downward spiral and the country was engaged in two wars that were a major part of that economic down-turn. No matter who was elected, it was going to be a struggle with daunting challenges.
But in 2008 Obama had a vast wave of support and goodwill–not just in the U.S., but worldwide. Only a fringe cadre of malcontents wanted Obama to fail; the majority wanted him to succeed because his success would mean the U.S. would regain some of the international stature it had lost under the disastrous tenure of the Bush Administration.
Obama had more opportunity than any newly elected president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. In addition to winning the election outright with 52 percent of the vote (no problematic recounts), he had the added bolster of a Democratic majority in Congress, an 85 percent approval rating nationally and a glowing international response from leadership even in nations who had come to hate us.

Obama’s popularity had been evidenced in much more than poll ratings: the junior senator from Illinois who had spent less than a year in the Senate before running for president raised more money than any single candidate in U.S. history, with at least a third of it coming in the form of small donations from avid supporters.

It’s no longer political heresy to say it: No true progressive can vote for President Obama in 2012.

There was nothing that could stop a progressive agenda.
Nothing, that is, except a president incapable of decision-making whose true politics were definitively more centrist than those he had presented during the primary.
Obama’s closet right-of-center politics became a huge liability to the Democrats almost immediately, allowing the Republican congressional minority to orchestrate coup after stalemate after filibuster. Without actual leadership from the president, the Democratic Congress languished and capitulated. And that was only part of the problem.
Obama’s decision-making stasis began with his Cabinet choices. The most damaging came early on: the choice of Tim Geithner for Treasury Secretary. Choosing someone to manage the nation’s money troubles who hadn’t paid his taxes was more than just a glitch–it was an embarrassment. Geithner should have had the grace to withdraw and Obama should have appointed someone else immediately.
But this was the first episode of Obama’s intransigence–or what many of the insiders who have already left the Administration call his arrogant refusal to listen to advice. Obama’s inability to admit when he’s wrong (just like his predecessor) began damaging his presidency almost immediately.
The examples are many: health care reform, where Obama ignored Republican counter-arguments for an entire year until they became the only arguments. At that point the lackluster, won’t-go-into-effect-until-2014, eviscerated, no-premium caps, pro-health care industry bill offered little to Americans in desperate need of affordable health care.
Then there were the wars. Obama had promised to end them. But instead he expanded the war in Afghanistan with more than 90,000 troops and an expansion into Pakistan that was so pervasive that the U.S. and Pakistan were in constant conflict as Pakistani citizens were killed by U.S. fighter drones.
Obama also expanded into Yemen, again with fighter drones. And a few months ago, began yet another war in Libya.
As a candidate, Obama promised to close Guantanamo and end torture. He even gave a date: January 2010. Neither has happened. Reports of torture in Bagram under Obama’s watch plus reports of extraordinary rendition combined with keeping Guantanamo open, holding prisoners who had little or no evidence against them.
Perhaps supporters of Obama could forgive the health care debacle, the ratcheting up of the wars and the torture. After all, to a degree, these were all inherited problems. The argument could be made that Obama had limited options that were only understandable once he was in office.
But that doesn’t account for the slap in the face to progressives (and other Americans who don’t seem to care as much) by Obama on civil liberties. Toward the end of the presidential primary, Obama voted with George Bush to expand warrant-less wiretapping of Americans. It was an ominous vote that portended real trouble should Obama become president, but the hype of hope combined with Obama’s immense charisma overrode reason.
Since his election, Obama has–by the ACLU’s own standards–done more damage to American civil liberties than any President since Nixon. Hardly the agenda of a progressive.
In addition to expanding warrant-less wiretapping and infiltrating the Internet, the Obama Administration has worked avidly to eviscerate Miranda–the warning suspects receive when they are arrested. Obama also spent the majority of his term keeping gays and lesbians out of the military and doing damage to judicial efforts to repeal Prop 8 in California. Under Obama, Pvt. Bradley Manning–an American soldier and veteran of Afghanistan–is being held in torturous conditions decried by Amnesty International, but the President has ignored calls for his release–or at the very least, a trial.
Congress repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell 200 days ago, but the President still has not signed the bill. Yet his re-election campaign cites his repeal of DADT as an example of what he has done as president.
Last week the Center for Public Integrity released a report on the Obama Administration and cronyism. It was immensely damaging. More than 80 percent of those who donated more than $500,000 in bundled contributions to Obama’s presidential campaign have been given jobs in the Administration. And the non-partisan CPI notes that Obama’s ambassadorial appointments have been more political than any other president since Gerald Ford.
What’s more, Obama has filled the upper-echelons of his administration with lobbyists and corporatists–the exact opposite of his promises during his campaign.
Obama–a millionaire–cited as his first choices on how to lower the deficit cutting $2 billion in heating grants to the poor and cutting Pell grants for higher education to poor students. This was after his capitulation to the Republicans on the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy despite over nine percent unemployment and 17 percent under-employment and the fact that more than 30 percent of all mortgages are underwater. These are the Obama tax cuts, now.
Like his predecessor, Obama is in the pocket of Big Oil and Big Coal. He has received more money from these two industries than Bush did at the same point in his presidency. What’s more, Obama has failed to proffer a single progressive policy in his time in office. Not one.
He has also been cited as one of the least transparent presidents in recent American history.
Throughout the Bush years Republicans blamed any problems on the previous Clinton Administration. Many Democrats have taken a page from the Republican play book and blame all the problems of the Obama Administration on the Bush Administration. But Harry Truman said, “The buck stops here,” meaning that responsibility for what happened during a given administration accrued to the President, no one else.
Obama is responsible for his presidency and the damage it has done to the nation and to other nations. Americans are still being killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan and Yemen. There continues to be talk of war with Iran.
Some argue that objecting to Obama’s Republican-lite policies and politics is playing into Republican hands, to which I can only counter that the only person playing into Republican hands is Obama.
The man is not a progressive and it’s hard to see how he is even a Democrat. Throughout progressive circles the search for a challenger to Obama for 2012 continues. I hope one can be found.
But what has to be clear for progressives is that Obama must not be re-elected in 2012. Perhaps the Democrats can only function in opposition to the Republicans. Perhaps that is the only way for us to fight our way to real progressive action.
Capitulation is never an answer, however. If I could not vote for war and torture and Big Oil under George W. Bush, how could I vote for the same things–as well as civil liberties abuses–under Barack Obama? As a true progressive, I cannot. And I urge others to recognize just what this presidency is doing to our nation and move not further to the right, but back to the true left where actual decent, progressive change has always happened in this nation.

What Is Really Scary Isn’t Palin

victoria — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 20:35:01 +0000

I have been busy starting an independent publishing house for kid’s books and trying not to go crazy over what’s happening in the Gulf and what’s not happening in Washington. Then this morning I get an email in which a friend asks:

Did you see the cover of Newsweek this week? “St. Sarah” (Palin). Scary as all get out.

I let out the same sigh I let out every time I get an over-wrought email or read an over-wrought post about Palin somewhere. But this one does prompt me to respond and to think about the comment which came, as the “Oh no!!!!!! Sarah Palin–run for your lives!!!!” comments always do, from someone who has center left politics. (And please don’t tell me there’s a left in America. There isn’t. There’s a center left, there’s a center, there’s a center right, there’s a right and there’s an extreme right. Alas, no extreme left. That handful of octogenerian Commies in Greenwich Village still arguing Trotsky v. Stalin does not count. Seriously. When we get a left here like we had in the 1960s or like much of Europe still has, then we can talk leftists. Until then it’s center left definition for you.)

Here’s what I think about Sarah Palin. I don’t care about her. She’s pretty, she’s charismatic, she has great skin, she wears clothes beautifully. But I do not care about her or whether Inside Edition thinks she had a boob job because they can’t tell the difference between a form-fitting t-shirt and a suit jacket. I do not care who she supports or what she says about the Gulf. She’s marginal. She’s relevant only in as much as she is the prop to keep Obama from completely gutting his presidency. Without Sarah Palin, what would Obama do? He’d have to go back to hating Hillary. He’d have to find a new deflection from his own massive mis-steps.

That’s what I think about Palin.

I just don’t have the Palin Paranoia. I can’t muster it.That syndrome comes largely from Obama supporters who can’t let go of the fact that he’s turned out to be everything the Hillary supporters said he was during the primary. I think Palin Paranoia is all about deflecting our attention from the real problem, which is our actual elected officials, starting with the President. Palin’s not an elected official. She didn’t win. She left her elected office in Alaska before her term was up. It doesn’t even matter what the reasons were–she left, which was the kiss of death for any other run for public office. But she doesn’t want to be in public office. Why should she when she has so much personal power–and money–without any of the sturm und drang and actual hard work that goes with being a public servant? She can go here and there–or not–and say whatever and be loved or hated and then go to sleep at night with no worries. No state to run, no country to run. Her biggest problem right now is that her daughter Bristol has allegedly reconcilled with the despicable cad who is the father of her baby.

No one can hold Palin accountable for anything she says because really, she only answers to her fan base, which is large but also largely marginal, and the press which can’t decide if it loves or hates her but does know it likes her on magazine covers because she sells. Well.

So why the center left’s obsession with her? Sure a lot of people like her–she’s incredibly charismatic. but she has no real power. Why has anyone forgotten that? To paraphrase Gwen Stephani, she’s just a girl in the world. Obama is president. He has he power. Doesn’t use it for squat, but he does have it.

Here’s the question–or rather questions–I want to ask everyone who quakes over Palin. Is she the person perpetrating torture in your name? No. That’s Obama.

Is she the person running three wars? (Yes, three, since Pakistan is a separate country. Oh and we bombed Yemen this morning, but it’s a Saturday and everyone ignores the news on a Saturday, so does that count?) No, the person running the three wars and bombing Yemen is Obama.

Is Palin the person who screwed up in the Gulf? No, still Obama.

Is Palin the person who has let the nation languish at ten percent unemployment while trying to appease the Republicans? No, that’s Obama.

Is Palin the person making deals behind closed doors with Big Oil and Big Coal? Again–Obama.

Is Palin the person who made us endless promises for a transparent government with no lobbyists and then proceeded to put lobbyists in half of his cabinet? Still–Obama.

Is Palin the person who moved the U.S. Supreme Court to the right when we all thought he would move it to the left by nominating two center-right justices to replace two liberal justices? Sadly, inevitably, and for decades to come, that too is Obama.

So when I think about Palin, I think the focus on her from the center-left Obama supporters like moveon and the DSCC and Code Pink and people who laud themselves as progressives is all about getting our attention off Obama and saying, “No—look over there! THAT’S what’s scary.”

Nope, what’s scary is that we elected Obama. All of us who voted for him, myself included. So we can’t complain like we could about Bush. We didn’t vote for Bush so we could sigh and point and show disdain for eight long years. We could talk about what would happen when a Democrat was in the White House again.

Okay, well, now the Democrat is in. Has been in. And look at where we are. It was Obama who allowed Palin to hijack the health care reform conversation and turn it into a conversation about death panels. It was Obama who gutted the public option. It was Obama who spent months wooing Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, the joint Republican swine senators of Maine, for their puny votes as Republicans for health care reform (because Maine isn’t going under with poor people who don’t have health care, no it isn’t) and totally ignored the fact that he was losing votes from his own party until it was too late.

We had to put up with eight years of “The Decider” and now we have two more years to go with the “Unable to Decide-er.”

Much as we might want to blame Palin for what’s wrong in America, she’s just barely even a symptom. Whereas Obama has become the actual complaint. If you can look at nothing else, look at the Gulf. That is Obama’s Katrina. And it didn’t have to be.

Those of us struggling to retain some measure of progressivism in the face of the current centrist presidency that we voted in need to remember that Palin is Obama’s best friend right now. He needs her more desperately than John McCain ever did. She’s the person Obama’s devotees hold up as a caution: ”This is why we have to support Obama!” As if the only choices left to us as American voters are Obama or Palin.

Wrong.

It’s not Palin v. Obama. It never was. Palin isn’t running for president. And even her staunchest supporters aren’t sure that’s what they want for/from her. Palin is a king maker. And, apparently, an un-king maker. Seven of the ten candidates she supported and put her arms around won in their respective primaries. She wants that role and it’s a good role for her. She also points fingers at Obama regularly. Which, if Obama were doing the job he said he would do, wouldn’t matter one whit.

And yet it does. Which is always the problem when the Emperor has no clothes. It doesn’t really matter who points it out. It’s the fact that matters.

Still, come 2012 Obama is going to be running not against the perky gal from Alaska, but against some stalwart of the new Republican vanguard. Someone who will point to the failures of the Obama Administration much as Obama pointed to the failures of the Bush Administration and ask that inevitable question Bill Clinton posed nearly two decades ago: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

Obama isn’t going to ever be running against Sarah Palin. He’s going to be running against his own record. We voted him in with no experience because we were against experience. Our experience made us distrust experience. Experience looked like John McCain and that wasn’t the kind of experience we wanted.

And I do not regret my vote against McCain. I don’t even regret my vote for Obama. I regret Obama’s inability to lead, to be decisive, to do anything at all without a quorum or committee holding his hand and without looking at the Republicans first for their permission.

In the Palin v. Obama debate the facts are clear: neither deserves to be president. Alas, Obama is president. And that’s what’s causing the problems we are having. Did Obama make all the mess that needs cleaning up? Hardly, which is something both the Republicans and Democrats need to remember. But he hasn’t been a good clean-up guy, either, as the Gulf oil spill has made abundantly, tragically, endlessly clear.

Palin isn’t interested in being president. She never was. She’s said it a gazillion times. She likes being where she is–making a lot of money, making a lot of press and with the Democrats intent on keeping her solidly in the limelight for as long as they need her to take the heat off Obama, which will be right up until the November 2012 election, if things keep going the way they have been.

So do I find Sarah Palin scary? Hardly. Obama–the guy I voted for–doing nothing about anything—now that’s scary. Because we have real things to be scared about–the unending wars, a shattered economy where some people will never get their jobs back, unending torture, Elaine Kagan as a shoe-in for the Supreme Court, housing foreclosures as high as ever, a Gulf oil spill no one seems able to fix.

In the panoply of things to be scared of, Sarah Palin doesn’t even register on the political Richter Scale. And anyone who thinks she does, really isn’t paying attention.

We’ve got real problems in America. The question we need to be posing is, Who do we get to fix them? since the guy who said he was going to do just that seems to have abdicated much like Sarah Palin did her governorship. The only thing is, Obama hasn’t left his office, He’s just not really in it.— VAB

the corporate politics of rape

victoria — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:27:23 +0000

for most people, the polanksi arrest and subsequent hand-wringing from the pro-child-rape contingent (there’s nothing else to call people who support a man who raped a child orally, anally and vaginally after drugging her) is yesterday’s news.

those of us for whom rape is not passe feel differently. the polanski case is not over. nor is rape.

rape isn’t yesterday’s news, and we are not–no matter what some say–living in a post-feminist world where rape doesn’t count.

jamie leigh jones isn’t a name as well-known as that of roman polanski or even roman polanski’s victim, samantha geimer. jamie leigh jones was gang-raped in iraq. sen. al franken (D-MN) wanted to make sure what happened to her never happened to another woman working for our government. it wasn’t complex–it was just allowing victims of assault to seek justice. we used to call that democracy in action.

here are the facts, via ThinkProgress:

In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and “warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.” (Jones was not an isolated case.) Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration.

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.” Speaking on the Senate floor Franken said:

The constitution gives everybody the right to due process of law … And today, defense contractors are using fine print in their contracts do deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court. … The victims of rape and discrimination deserve their day in court [and] Congress plainly has the constitutional power to make that happen.

that’s the story–both jones’ and franken’s. her tale is grim beyond belief and what’s more awful is that it took the most junior senator in the entire senate to try and right that wrong. bravo, franken!

in what parallel universe is gang rape incidental?

the jones/franken story does not end with franken’s amendment, of course, because decency seems to be low on the list of concerns for members of congresss.

30 republicans voted against the provision, among them sen. david vitter (R-LA), who is best known for having patronized brothels in new orleans and having a fetish for being diapered and sen. john ensign (R-NV) who was just caught in a sex scandal involving lots of money and a former co-worker. john mccain (R-AZ) also voted for gang rape of women. the father of daughters.

today, the 30 republicans for gang-rape (the names of the others are posted at the end of this column, so you can contact them and ask them why they support the gang rape of american women working in iraq) got a nod from a decorated war hero, WWII veteran sen. dan inouye (D-HI).

at 85, inouye has served in congress longer than almost anyone–since 1959. he is the second most senior member of congress (after robert byrd). he’s distinguished himself over his years of service in the house and senate in many ways. but now, as chair of the appropriations committee, he’s considering deleting franken’s provision.

apparently the lives of women are not as important as defense contracts. just like the lives of 13-year-olds are not as important as those of esteemed film directors.

let me say again–i expect the republicans to act like the thugs they are (ten republicans voted for the franken amendment, however, which does make one wonder why they are still republicans). but we need better democrats. democrats with spine and with integrity. why would someone of inouye’s stature do something so puerile? the lives of rape victims matter.

but to whom?

here’s another tidbit from the “rape is over” file:

health insurers consider rape a pre-existing condition.

if you have been raped and you have an exam and you get the drugs usually given to rape victims—HIV and other STD preventatives as well as the morning after pill–you qualify as having a pre-existing condition because your rapist might have infected you with HIV or another STD. because you were raped.

here’s one account taken from the investigative report done by Huffington Post’s Danielle Ivory in today’s story (http://www.alternet.org/story/143426/):

A 38-year-old woman in Ithaca, N.Y., said she was raped last year and then penalized by insurers because in giving her medical history she mentioned an assault she suffered in college 17 years earlier. The woman, Kimberly Fallon, told a nurse about the previous attack and months later, her doctor’s office sent her a bill for treatment. She said she was informed by a nurse and, later, the hospital’s billing department that her health insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, not only had declined payment for the rape exam, but also would not pay for therapy or medication for trauma because she “had been raped before.”

Fallon says she now has trouble getting coverage for gynecological exams. To avoid the hassle of fighting with her insurance company, she goes to Planned Parenthood instead and pays out of pocket.

let’s be sure we keep giving the health care industry whatever it is they want. last week we discovered that domestic violence was a pre-existing condition. this week it’s rape. maybe it’s just being a that woman is the pre-existing condition.—-vab

here are the senators who voted for the gang rape of women: Alexander (R-TN), Barrasso (R-WY), Bond (R-MO), Brownback (R-KS), Bunning (R-KY), Burr (R-NC), Chambliss (R-GA), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Crapo (R-ID), DeMint (R-SC), Ensign (R-NV), Enzi (R-WY), Graham (R-SC), Gregg (R-NH), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Kyl (R-AZ), McCain (R-AZ), McConnell (R-KY), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Sessions (R-AL), Shelby (R-AL), Thune (R-SD), Vitter (R-LA) and Wicker (R-MS).