Activist Post
George W. Bush was clearly a mentally-challenged puppet of the military/banking/oil elite. The policies put it in place at breakneck speed after 9/11 were provably predetermined by think tanks well in advance. Not that other presidents were any less controlled by this hidden agenda, but there was a noticeable in-your-face quickening of corporate-government tyranny under Bush.
These policies like wars of aggression, illegal surveillance of Americans, torture of detainees indefinitely held without formal charges, unfair "free trade" agreements, and bank bailouts rightfully enraged many progressives during the Bush years. Yet, not only have these policies accelerated under Obama, even more of the draconian playbook is unfolding.
After 8 years of Bush's reign that ended with a record low presidential approval rating in the low 20s, Obama's promise of hope and change inspired many beyond mainline progressives. His campaign speeches were so powerful that they landed him the Nobel Peace Prize without having done anything for world peace except to offer the idea in order to get elected. As a Constitutional law professor and attorney, Obama appeared to have a greater understanding of rights and the balance of power than did flunky Bush.
Although policies being implemented under Obama's leadership exhibit the continuation of Bush's tyrannical agenda, his stunning betrayal of populist and Constitutional principles in support of these actions makes him the ultimate hypocrite. Additionally, because Obama is a much more influential orator than Bush, his service to the puppet masters is far more dangerous to the American people he's supposed to serve.
There have been many articles written about Obama's unkept promises and outright lies, but here are 10 actions that prove Obama is just as bad if not worse than Bush:
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Tax cheat Geithner
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Bank/Corporate Bailouts: Although the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), otherwise known as the bankster bailout, occurred on Bush's watch, Obama fully supported it as necessary. Obama then followed up this massive wealth grab with a gargantuan stimulus bill which has basically been absorbed by the financial crisis as well. All said,
Bloomberg and others reported the taxpayer guarantees for Wall Street are upwards of $23 trillion. Additionally, the best part of Obama's cabinet and appointed czars are directly
connected to big banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. Furthermore, Obama and Democratic leaders gave the Federal Reserve even
more regulatory power over the economy. The Administration hails the Financial Reform bill as a big political accomplishment, but the bill never addressed the three major problems: doesn't
break up or reduce the size of too-big-to-fail banks, doesn't
remove the massive government guarantees to the giant banks, and it won’t even
increase liquidity requirements to prevent future meltdowns. The inmates are too clearly running Obama's asylum.
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Betrayal of the Poor: Bush never pretended to give a damn about the poor and the systematic mechanisms that keep them poor; openly calling the "haves and have mores" his "base." But Obama has been portrayed as different, mainly because the Democratic party is viewed as more empathetic to the poor. Obama promised affordable healthcare, to create new jobs, and to increase access to a college education. However, the mandated healthcare bill has proven to actually
hurt the poor, the
"jobs" bill HIRE was nothing but a smokescreen to pass capital controls, and college loans are increasingly worse than useless since record numbers of students can't find work to pay them off. So far he only seems to be helping the poor by extending
food stamps to a record number of needy Americans -- which is currently on the spending cut chopping block by the way. Obama also extended Bush's
tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans while the poor suffer the dramatic effects of inflation and the approaching austerity cuts demanded to prevent a government shutdown.
Expansion of Free Trade: Obama excoriated NAFTA, GATT and other so-called "Free Trade" agreements that were put in place under Clinton and Bush (with CAFTA). One of Obama's
campaign mailers to Ohioans read "one million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA, including nearly 50,000 jobs here in Ohio." And Obama told unions that "he has always opposed NAFTA, and said the trade deal should be amended and renegotiated." It is abundantly clear that free trade agreements have not done well for American manufacturing and its workers (just like Obama told us during his campaign). These
free trade agreements are designed to only help the multinational corporations who wrote them, and who Obama now works for. In contrast to being "opposed" to such agreements, the government moves forward with many new
similar agreements.
Escalating Wars of Aggression: Whoever thought it couldn't get worse than Bush in regards to wars of aggression -- especially by a Nobel Peace Prize recipient -- have been proven dead wrong. Obama has now unilaterally
attacked more countries than Bush, notably bombing inside Pakistan, Yemen and now Libya without Congressional approval. Obama is worse than war-mongering Neocons because he moved the war bar from requiring a real or manufactured threat to justify American military intervention, to vague humanitarian justifications. In other words, if a secular dictator is stamping out a handful of jihadists that threaten his regime, we will now bomb the dictator and
support the jihadists when it serves corporate interests. By all counts
Obama is serving the same military/oil masters no matter what labels or excuses are given. It is truly a hideous display to watch progressives support Obama's wars as if they're more righteous than Bush's.
Torture and Sport Killing: Bush accepted some blamefor the Abu Ghraib torture debacle. Rightly so, as it was his Administration that set forth more enhanced interrogation permissions down the chain of command that ultimately resulted in such disgusting behavior. Obama used the notion of closing Guantanamo prison to score political points and to appear as "anti-torture." Not only does Guantanamo remain open two years into his presidency, the detainees have
less rights than they did under Bush. Additionally, Obama has allowed the torture of
American soldier Bradley Manning simply for being a suspected whistleblower. If he allows this type of treatment to an American citizen, we can only imagine the tactics that are still being used against enemy detainees. If it's fair to blame Bush for Abu Ghraib, then it seems fair to blame Obama for allowing an environment where the U.S.
military is engaged in sport killing of innocent civilians -- which also seems to negate his calls for humanitarian purity in other nations.
Illegal Domestic Surveillance: It seems the monster surveillance-industrial complex that was kicked off under Bush remains in full swing under Obama. Obama voted for the Bush/Cheney FISA-telecom immunity after vowing to support a filibuster of it while he was a Senator. Glenn Greenwald
reported: "So candidate Obama unambiguously vowed to his supporters that he would work to ensure 'full accountability' for 'past offenses' in surveillance lawbreaking. President Obama, however, has now become the prime impediment to precisely that accountability, repeatedly engaging in extraordinary legal maneuvers to ensure that 'past offenses' -- both in the surveillance and torture/rendition realm -- remain secret and forever immunized from judicial review." And
Carol Rose added, "The link between secrecy and surveillance is critical: in effect, our government is increasing its power to watch its citizens, while diminishing the power of citizens to watch their government – the very antithesis of democracy." It's telling how out of control illegal surveillance has become when
private foreign companies are hired to spy on American environmental activists. This is in addition to the TSA's roll-out of naked body scanners and intrusive pat-downs selectively enforced at airports and fiercely defended by Obama's DHS.
Rule of Law is Dead: The
Rule of Law is an ancient concept that means a society is governed by rational, objective written laws, as opposed to the personal whim or arbitrariness of some king. Under this pretext, no one is above the law, not even kings. Yet, we have seen this concept steadily erode from reality over many decades, but not so blatant as under George W. Bush whose team permanently subverted the rules in favor of the elite. Under Bush and now Obama, the corporate elite clearly get away with massive crimes against humanity and overwhelming fraud, while the little people are still routinely punished for all minor offenses. With not even a hint of punishment, banks can
openly loot and defraud the public, the government can spy on Americans, the TSA can grope our private parts, while large corporations continue to poison us and the environment with impunity. The Feds, under Obama, have even raided
legal medical marijuana dispensaries and
private organic cooperatives. In addition, Obama signed an
Executive Order to indefinitely detain "terror" suspects even after acquittal -- while other
lawmakers seek to remove Miranda Rights. Who is prosecuting these crimes and injustices? When the criminal corporations with their government partners continue to run the system, there will be no rule of law, or justice.
Free Speech Restrictions: Bush mainly used fear, intimidation, access and
fake reporters to control the establishment message. He and the media cartel acted in concert to sell gigantic lies to the public. Now, as more people replace their television service with the Internet, "news" has been more difficult for the establishment to control. As the global awakening takes place, the crackdown on free speech intensifies under Obama. The crackdown has been most obvious on the Internet (see next section) and on
peaceful protesters. In a comically hypocritical moment that exemplifies how tyrannical this administration has become, Hillary Clinton was giving a speech about supporting the right of peaceful protesters while her
security thugs violently removed a "veteran for peace" from the audience for standing in silent protest. Additionally, there was an absolute police state put in place during the 2009 G20 meeting in
Pittsburgh to shut down peaceful protests. Finally, we know what direction the current Administration is headed in terms of free speech, given the recent White Papers revealing their desire to
"outlaw" or "tax" conspiracy theories, and to make it a
felony offense to share copyrighted information even when no money is involved.
Internet Rights Eroding: The open and free
Internet is under full assault under Obama's leadership. It has become obvious that there has never been much in the way of Internet privacy, especially since the Patriot Act went into full effect. But now, free access to information via the Internet is the target of legislation such as The
Protecting Cybersecurity as a National Asset Act, aka the "Internet Kill Switch" bill, and the
Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), aka the domain "Blacklist" bill. The free Internet is also being threatened by market-based "net neutrality" agreements, civil lawsuits, technical censorship via search engines, and yes, blogging taxes too. Finally, the
DHS has been arbitrarily seizing domain names, which is clearly unconstitutional. Given that Obama is completely in bed with Google and others in the corporate
information cartel, you can bet he will show his support for these endeavors even if only by remaining silent as they are debated then implemented.
Obamacare Fascism: Even many
progressives view Obamacare as a purely fascist policy. When a progressive tries to defend Obamacare these days, the best argument they can give is "at least Obama tried to fix the problem." It's their way of subtly deflecting blame to Bush for ignoring it because he was too busy "smokin' turrurists outta their holes". Healthcare reform was meant to increase competition and affordable coverage for all Americans. Yet, the private insurance monopolies remain and citizens are mandated to buy from them under penalty of jail, while
1000 of the most connected corporations are exempt from the law. Furthermore, the
FDA remains under the full control of Big Pharma/Chemical giants and the
giveaways to the drug companies have only increased. Finally, when there are huge profits involved in deciding if people live or die, and budgetary rationing of services, you will always have "death panels." So, yes, the corporate government healthcare merger is complete with for-profit "death panels." Folks, if you want to know what the modern-day definition of fascism is, you just read it.
We can sense the hate mail is coming from die-hard "team blue" fans here, but America doesn't stand a chance without an honest assessment of what she represents and where she is heading under the policies outlined above. The Bush-Obama evolution is as blatant as it gets that the current two-party system has morphed into one that would more properly be labeled The Corporatist Party. We might do better to look beyond the two teams that so many root for, and realize that there is one central clubhouse from which they both operate.
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