Ray McGovern has an article on alternet.org whose starting point is very interesting. The typical press briefing has journalists taking dictation from the press secretary, and the journalists simply report what was said. Very little analysis is being done by journalists today. Hence the Bush and now the Obama administrations have had a free hand to tell us what they want us to hear about the purpose and reason for this war on terror.
The "progressives" seem to be shocked and surprised and outraged thinking that Obama is betraying them. What's really going on is they put projections onto Obama to pretend that Obama was like them, and being like them his administration would undertake every pet change they thought was important. If they had listened instead they'd have learned he was more of a centrist than progressive. By criticizing Obama, progressives are modeling the behavior of social movement participants as diverse as the abolitionists, suffragists, civil rights advocates, feminists and proponents of GLBT rights.
No President since FDR has been handed as many opportunities to transform the U.S. into something that doesn't threaten the stability of life on this planet. Is he blowing it? That's from Naomi Klein. She starts the article with the failure to get a groundshaking deal at the Copenhagen summit. If Obama had come to Copenhagen with a transformative commitment to getting the U.S. economy off fossil fuels, the other major emitters would have stepped up. The EU, Japan, China and India all indicated that they were willing to increase their levels of commitment, only if the U.S. took the lead.
They're the 9th richest people in America and they're pushing hard to upend President Obama's progressive agenda. Billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch are the wealthiest, and perhaps most effective, opponents of President Obama's progressive agenda. They have been looming in the background of every major domestic policy dispute this year. David and Charles are also responsible for a vicious attack campaign aimed directly at obstructing and killing progressive reform.
Chris Parenti suggests "The real purpose of these 30,000 soldiers is to make Obama look tough as he heads toward the next U.S. presidential election." I think he's forgetting the things Obama said about the two wars. He called Afghanistan the just war, the one we should have fought, rather than the delusionary distraction war in Iraq. Parenti suggests "It is political theater, nothing else" and I suggest that Parenti should reread Obama's speeches from 2007-8.
The Environmental Protection Agency released a long-secret document last week that reveals the agency's conclusions on global warming while President Bush was in office. The December 2007 document says greenhouse gases are dangerous and need to be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
"The Bush administration never accepted the need to regulate greenhouse gases," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson tells Liane Hansen.
The following is wild assed guessing but it strikes me as curious. Cuba recently announced possible oil reserves within their territorial waters, and around the same time Pres. Obama made suggestions to normalize relationships with Cuba. The relationship with Cuba of course has long been problematic, with a long and sordid history that's a strange relic of the war on Communism. There is a kind of sadness related to the poor relationship, that's connected to the families who are torn asunder on the altar of America's forgotten war on Communism.
Ray McGovern has an article on alternet.org whose starting point is very interesting. The typical press briefing has journalists taking dictation from the press secretary, and the journalists simply report what was said. Very little analysis is being done by journalists today. Hence the Bush and now the Obama administrations have had a free hand to tell us what they want us to hear about the purpose and reason for this war on terror.
