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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Roman Berry
Published Letters: 198 Editor's Choice: 10
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Could it be that Obama is giving the conventional thinkers rope to hang their theories? And when they fail, he will bring in the radical economists?
...is of the 11th Dimensional Chess variety, or so it seems to me. Click my signature for a link to Glenn Greenwald's blog at Salon if the reference is unfamiliar.
I am sorely tempted to argue that anyone who can inspire such fear and loathing from both the extreme right and left has got to be doing something right.
Ah yes, the traditional cop out of the media. Looking to take over for Howard Kurtz or sumthin' like that?
Sorry Mr. Leonard, but no. I am flabbergasted first off by your apparent belief that there is some sort of extreme left with a voice in our political discourse. There isn't and if you don't know that, you really may have been too long at this station. Time for some fresh air.
The uproar over what is happening to the autoworkers is based in the complete and utter disparity of the treatment being doled out by Obama as opposed to the obscene sums thrown at the investment banks and banking conglomerates. The automakers may or may not be viable in the long term, but then again, their odds of being viable are at least as good as those facing AIG, Citigroup and (if not for all the taxpayer money laundered through multiple channels), Government Sachs.
Opposition from both ends of the spectrum is, in my opinion, far more likely to be indicative that something is way wrong with the Obama plan and not, as you seem to feel, some contra-indicator proving its rightness.
Geez!
(This was a post I made on Table Talk. Click my sig for the link to the thread.)
Here's a brief excerpt from FDR's first inaugural address:
(O)ur distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for... Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.
Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence . . . Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True, they have tried. But their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
That FDR was a 'purtysmart fella. But it gets better. Here's something FDR said that I think is more than just relevant, it's an explanation of exactly where we are today:
“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”
This isn't Obama's doing, at least in so much as he did not
create it. This state of affairs was already the case and had been
the case probably since about the time that Eisenhower gave his
farewell address:
"(T)hreats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. ... In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Substitute (or add) Wall Street to "military industrial complex" and we're on the mark in the modern era. The US government is now no more than a wholly owned subsidiary of finance and defense contractors. We the people are simply here to be of service. Any illusion of actual freedom is just that, an illusion.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
