A Peoples’ History of the Obama Presidency

Obama - Trump

In two and one-half years, the Trump house of horrors has produced poisonous legislation to further oppress millions of poor and working class Americans and erode what’s left of the fraying social safety net. Even the Obama administration is starting to look good in retrospect instead of what it really was a business-as-usual administration whose campaign was big on promises — affordable, universal healthcare, legislation to advance labor’s right to organize and bargain collectively, and curtailment of the militarized surveillance state and its corollary perpetual war —and whose presidency was a repudiation of all that came before — expanding two wars to seven, becoming the official deporter-in-chief, selecting targets for assassination on Terror Tuesdays, including an American teenager, using a 1917 law passed by another failed president to lock up whistleblowers, passing a corporate welfare bill promoted as universal healthcare and generally selling out the hope and change promises candidate Obama had made. Can we be hornswoggled again, this time by his partner in crime, Joe Biden? Want to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself? Read “A Peoples’ History of the Obama Presidency” to see how it could.

For a more exhaustive examination of eight years of a failed Obama presidency, read SA’s Legacy: Obama’s & Ours

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Will a Charm Offensive and Oodles of Money Land Pete Buttigieg in the Oval Office? Ask Barack Obama

Obama Remembered

Here we go again. In an eerie reprise of 2008, along comes Pete Buttigieg with good looks crowd-pleasing rhetoric, the right credentials and most important the staffers and big-time donors who won it for Obama. Mayor Pete is running a campaign large on half-truths, misdirection, and feel-good platitudes and short on principled policy positions. His big donor fetes are drawing the cream of the oligarchic crop. They are the real engine driving his campaign. His “meet and greets” with ordinary Americans are window dressing. Like his mentor, he’s not for a national healthcare system, free college tuition, scaling back a hopelessly bloated military, restoring sanity to a surveillance-obsessed government, or putting a dagger in the heart of income equality. We aren’t the first to point out the resemblance but we are the first to do it in living color with actual quotes from the horses’ mouths. Ready for eight more years of Obama? Before you drink the Kool-Aid, read “Will a Charm Offensive and Oodles of Money Land Pete Buttigieg in the Oval Office? Ask Barack Obama

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She Spoke, He Bellowed… The Democrats Have Only Themselves to Blame for This Mess

Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat what hath the past wrought? Dial back a few years to November 4, 2008. Obama was elected president that day. His base —union workers who needed to kick start organizing drives, middle and working class Americans who needed a fix to growing inequality, poor, disabled and elderly Americans trying to hold onto their meager benefits, and all Americans hungering for universal healthcare (like most of the unexceptional world)— thought they had won the lottery. “

Yes we can,” he promised in campaign mode. The bloom came off the rose when the tune in the White House changed to “I’d better not.” Democrats have long memories. Eight years later when Obama tried to hand the baton of leadership to Clinton, his base responded “No, we won’t” vote for four more years of an Obama clone. Deciding that Donald J. Trump was the lesser evil, they voted with their feet (didn’t vote) and with their choice (not-Clinton). The downside —Trump won with all the attendant misery that caused. Last week’s spectacle, a side-effect of victory, —eleven Republican men bent on reshaping the Supreme Court in their misshapen image —didn’t come out of the blue. Echoes of Democratic failure are all over that looming catastrophe. Read “She Spoke, He Bellowed…The Democrats Have Only Themselves to Blame For This Mess” to find out the true extent of their culpability.

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When U.S. War Criminals Become Nobel Peace Prize Laureates

Reporter: “Do you deserve the Nobel Peace Prize do you think?”
President Trump: “Everyone thinks so, but I would never say that.”

Judging by two U.S. presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Barack Obama, and one secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, who have received Nobel Peace Prizes, President Trump’s might well be within shouting distance. Full disclosure: Woodrow Wilson was the third sitting president to receive a Nobel and his credentials for war criminal status are almost as impeccable as the other two. However, space and time limit us to the worst-case examples. In a later post, we may examine how President Wilson stacks up in the presidential war criminal sweepstakes.

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Eating Her Young: America Reinvents the Law of the Jungle in Her Own Image

“I am 30 years old. I went to college to get a better job. But now I regret going. I originally owed $70,000, have been paying for nine years and now owe $157,000. I can barely afford to go to the dentist or doctor. If there’s an emergency, I have to rely on credit cards or retired parents. I am living at poverty level and would have been better off not going to college. I’m never going to be able to buy a house or save money. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to enjoy life again.” (Kristina M.)

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Axis of Hypocrisy: Bush and Obama Hit the Rewind Button

“We’ve seen the return of isolationist sentiments, forgetting that American
security is directly threatened by the chaos and despair of distant places.”

Ex-President George W. Bush reprimanding President Trump

“What we can’t have is the same old politics of division…
The world counts on America having its act together. The world is looking to us as an example.
The world asks what our values and ideals are and are we living up to our creed.”
Ex-President Barack Obama calling out President Trump

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