When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, that corporations were entitled to every Constitutional Right that individual Americans enjoy, perhaps the greatest blow ever in American history, was struck against democracy. The next shock to democracy came with Reagan's appeal of the Fairness Doctrine, which gave spawn to such American traitors as Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdock, with his Fox News, Right Wing propaganda outlet. The next time democracy was dealt a grievous blow was in 2000, when another U.S. Supreme Court decision, pulled off a coup de' tat that installed an eminently unsuitable and immoral jackass to high office. This after losing the popular vote, and then, in plain daylight, stealing the election from the obvious winner. In restoring democracy to the American people These three event must be remedied, and revisiting them would be a good place to start. The third travesty could be fixed by demanding the resignations of the current sitting Supreme Court Justices who conspired in the coup that put Bush into the White House.
Americans, and particularly Progressive Americans, have once again had the rug pulled from under their feet. Obama has abandoned, one by one, his campaign promises to change the way Corporate Washington does business. His supporters are realizing there will be no sudden revelations of change as Obama explains away his losing battles with republicans as bipartisan cooperation. During the Bush Administration's early years Right Wing Media pronounced the death of the Democratic Party. With Bush's fading popularity, and the democrat's return to congressional dominance, it was plain the party's obituary was premature. But was it? The Democratic Party, paralyzed by its own indebtedness to corporate lobbyists of ever stripe and color, has been dying a slow, lingering death as those lobbyists call in their markers and Obama capitialates.
Obama quickly retreated from the progressive ideals he embraced to win the election, and that retreat offers all the evidence needed to show the democrats, as a party of progressive ideology, has indeed passed on. Those who are sickened by the Bush Administration's contempt for social conscience and moral principle must accept the Democratic Party's demise and look to a third party to fill the vacuum. Democrats get elected by playing Lucy, who always promises Charlie Brown she won't move the football, but always does after Charlie commits. Charlie, as gullible as they come, falls for Lucy's trick over and over again.
It's hard to see what Obama gains from his deceit. He is pilloried daily on any number of Right Wing radio and television programs. "Obama is a Muslim crows Limbaugh and Fox. "He's a socialist and anti-American. He will change the U.S. Flag. The Right gets away with this garbage because Reagan did away with the Fairness Doctrine, and opened the gate for the lies and distortions that pass as conservative, television and radio. The Communications Act of 1934 held broadcasters responsible for the content of their programming, and in1996 the FCC said that any broadcaster could lose its license if it "has knowingly transmitted false or deceptive signals or communications. Contrast that FCC rule with a 2003 decision of a Florida Court of Appeals that found for Rupert Murdock's Fox News when it decided "there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States.
Obama is terrified of the Right's noise machine, and will toe the line to keep its full wrath from falling on him. He's content to orbit in a holding pattern while giving grand speeches while his base slips quietly away to lick their wounds until another fraud comes along. Right Wing media has been deregulated to an extent that public figures and issues are routinely misrepresented, and always at the expense of the American people who would presumably wish to hear the truth. "What good fortune for those in power that the people do not think." -- Adolf Hitler
The republicans, even though a democrat is president and enjoys majorities in both Houses of Congress, are singularly devoted to limiting Obama to one term, and ideally, destroying his presidency with the complicity of his supporters who increasingly see him as a kind of Nancy Pelosi with pants. Obama, confronted with forces that demand he assert himself, simply cannot rise to the occasion. His declining poll numbers reflect this as he cooperates with the Right in assuring his unremarkable presidency. Republican legislators remain the predominant influence in Congress, and have reduced Obama to the status of an eloquent speaker who stands impotently by as the Republican Congress continues destroying the nation's social and economic infrastructure.
Obama's retreat, or more accurately his rout, from the major components of health care is beyond disgraceful. He has allowed the so called "Gang of Six to usurp his leadership. He has not checked the rabid Right Wing Press over frightening the public into believing its lies that Obama's plan should more appropriately be called "Death Care. Even Sarah Palin has reared her empty head to join the chorus of Right Wing Troglodytes who, in concert, ignore the painfully clear fact that privatized health care is a tragic joke, and its corporate managers, ecstatic with their profits, like the health care system just the way it is, and damn the American people.
Conservative T.V. and radio are filling the airwaves with "The Government Takeover! of health care. Unbelievably a majority of Americans are angry at the mere prospect that government would presume into their health and well being, competing with corporate care (there's an oxymoron) and driving those oh, so conscientious public servants, the HMO's, out of business. In Obama, progressives thought they'd hit a homerun, but are now finding they only replaced tweedlededum with tweedlededo. And incidentally, tweedlededum has gotten away scott free with his war crimes, including torturing enemy combatants, and in some cases, entirely innocent people.
President Obama is attempting to lead a nation that is populated by a plurality, according to the media, that are convinced that Limbaugh and his ilk are the last defenders of truth, justice and the American way. The Conservative Right understands perfectly the myriad ways in which to channel ignorance into useful corridors of deception. The unwashed masses, full of righteous anger, rise up on cue when the Conservative Right drops key words, like socialism, into its hayseed ears. Such folk are at a complete loss for a word that adequately describes the vast, no strings attached, taxpayer handouts to the banks. They accept their Social Security checks, and any American with school age children benefits from public schools. Both of the above examples are, of course, pure socialism. As for the bank handouts the Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Fox News aficionados find outright theft far preferable to such unholy evil as socialism, whatever they imagine that to be.
So Americans will continue watching the collective wealth of the nation disappear into the vast maw of the corporate welfare state, as they meekly and brainlessly accept the most expensive and least effective system of health care on the planet. After all, anything beats "Death Care. With such entrenched and widespread ignorance accepted as the norm, it is very difficult to see how government will ever be returned to the people.
4
4
3
