Forum

Tanosborn’s Columns
http://www.tanosborn.com/columns.html?subaction=showfull&id=1226064180&archive=&start_from=&ucat=16&

Why is it, then, that President-elect Obama received just 360 electoral votes and only 53 percent of the popular vote – barely 6 points more than Sen. McCain? This election, unlike others in the past, had more to do with the sorry state of the nation than with any conservative or liberal ideology. No, ideology was not that important this time around; not with America in shambles; a genocidal maniac conducting two wars of choice; and an economy fast-stepping towards certain depression, one looming to be with us for several years. A depression brought forth by uncontrolled Wall Street thievery nurtured by a rapacious Bush administration and a consenting Fed headed by Alan Greenspan.

Nineteen presidential elections ago, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected by a nation then submerged in an economic depression that lingered for a decade… until World War II. But the people stood behind their charismatic leader with hope and resolve, and out of despair emerged great social and economic reform. That was change, true change! Will Obama be afforded the same hope and resolve by Americans to institute change as FDR was, or will we be unreasonably expecting him “to deliver” from day one?

30-08-08—-
It was a much better setting for Barack Obama in mile high Denver than Jesus of Nazareth had in Galilee almost two millennia ago. Mountains versus hills, and a crowd probably 500-fold! And just as Christ is said by many to have given the central tenets of Christian discipleship on that momentous occasion, Obama gave an acceptance speech that defined not just the tenets of the Democratic Party but his vision of America; many of us, however, came away with the unchanging reality of the sad state of politics in America

Change as a theme proved to be not as coherent an issue, and much of the change espoused by Obama and his party, was (is) really Pyrrhic, perhaps no more than a few incrementally positive degrees from the type of government and society in which we live today. And that means same wars; same foreign policies; vassalage to Corporate America; and a totally irresponsible blindness to what is happening to America’s economy. On the latter, returning to the pre-Bush tax structure, as proposed, will not suffice, the gap between rich and poor has widened to an obscene extreme during the past quarter of a century… since Reagan’s presidency – and his voodoo economics – not to exclude the Clinton years when all those millions of jobs created, and for which his administration takes credit, were for the most part low-skill, minimum wage jobs.

Salve Barack Caesar! The Democratic Party has convened and found you to be worthy representative of the party to become CINC of the United States, and leader of the “free world;” for come next November it is another Commander-In-Chief that will be elected. And here we are, thinking that we’ll be casting our ballots for a president… not a Chief of Police empowered to protect the wealth and power of an elite; a person that will be expected to allow such elite to plunder and enslave at will, as in the recent past. That is in truth the power that Americans have at the ballot box: the selection of a CINC.

Granted that we have known all along that politics in this US is the closest thing to a cruel joke, with Tweedledee and Tweedledum (our duopoly of Demos and Republicans) mockingly tell us that people do rule, and that we are a democratic nation. Now, as if that ongoing cruelty weren’t enough, there are some Democratic politicians espousing an even greater bipartisanship. For the sake of national purpose, they claim. Are they favoring that we be governed by TweedleOne? Or is that too weirdly homo-incestuous since Dee and Dum are brothers? Well… maybe they turn out to be enantiomorphs!

The Sermon on the Mount at Galilee addressed important issues for Christianity with the Beatitudes and the reinterpretation of Mosaic Law. The Sermon on the Mount in Denver’s stadium gave us great oratory with the usual political Platitudes and the same old interpretation of American Exceptionalism. Obama is unquestionably no Jesus!

If it is change you expect with an Obama presidency, it will come from an eyedropper. Whether Americans accept it or not as an irremediable truth, their politics are being ran by Corporate America and the Pentagon. The show staged in Denver was sponsored by them… and so will the one next week (GOP) in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

It’s unfortunate that a charismatic leader with a very likely sense of humanity and social justice needs to find accommodation in his soul – read, sell his soul to the devil – if he is to achieve top recognition in American politics. It only took Obama two years to do so. But that’s how it is with American politics. Love it or love it… that’s our choice!

http://www.tanosborn.com/columns.html?subaction=showfull&id=1220096750&archive=&start_from=&ucat=16&

Je ne comprend pas votre silence par rapport à ce qui se passe depuis à peu prés une semaine à Gaza, on sent une certaine géne dans vos analyses pour tout ce qui concerne Israel.

Un point de vue intéressant sur ce qui se passe là-bas.

http://peripheries.net/article321.html