Obama Heroic Moderate? No way! 

Obama this week now claims to be “above it all”, painting himself as a force for moderation. He challenges the Democrats and Republicans in Congress to each bend a bit so that the debt ceiling can be raised and the debt itself lowered. His recipe: the Democrats should permit reductions in Medicare and Social Security. The Republicans should permit the resumption of some taxes on the very wealthy. But each refuses.

Sounds like Obama is a hero, right?

Not so – though he is trying to position himself as such in order to get re-elected in 16 months. 

First, Both the Democrats and the Republicans and Obama, just a few weeks ago, passed a humungus bill to fund the Pentagon’s wars, $680 Billion. Just some of that shaved off would bolster the domestic budget and make it patently unnecessary to cut Medicare and Social Security. There’s a cry that’s been going up for months to end the military intervention in Afghanistan, to say nothing of reducing the waste that is not even carefully hidden in the Pentagon’s arrogant and belligerent budget. But both parties and the president continue to shower money on the Pentagon.

So, by keeping the war budget carefully off the table, the President and the Democrats and the Republicans are tying one hand behind their collective backs and making a show of fighting with one hand over the leavings for domestic needs on the table. This makes it all a joke, except that it isn’t a joke – the people and the nation as a whole are the victims.

Secondly, pairing reductions for Medicare and Social Security with reduction of taxes for the very wealthy is unjust on its face. That such a proposal is made with a straight face should itself tell us just how far the White House and Congress have fallen. It’s not a small ditch. Not even a huge ditch. What they’ve fallen into is a cesspool of slime. They are fast proving their illegitimacy as self-claimed leaders of our country. They must be replaced!

If only one could think of the spectacle in Washington as a spectacle. Not that it isn’t a spectacle, an embarrassing charade, a ghastly joke, a bemusing entertainment. But it is a frighteningly clear illustration of incompetence, chicanery, deception, injustice, petty greed, dishonourable practices, bitter betrayals, the rhetoric of blame accompanied with shrill yelling, pathetic posturings, manipulation of rules for narrow and self-defeating little temporary triumphs to show up the opposition of the moment, and of presumably good minds gone to seed. They must be replaced!

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