I've been creating a sort of score card for the president. When I am being naive and sentimental I give him good marks, particularly by comparison with his predecessor.
Category: Obama/ Bush
Articulateness: 100/ 0
Intelligence: 100/ 0
Culture: 100/ 0
But on matters of substance Obama scores very differently, despite all his promises: promises that I naively believed were honest promises.
I am not talking about health care: Congress has to agree before we can have decent health care for Americans. Obama can't give us that by executive decree. Nor can he abolish the death penalty by himself.
But in areas in which, as president, he has full executive authority, I hold him responsible for the promises that he made. And he did indeed make promises--which he is not keeping.
Category: Obama/ Status Quo Ante (Bush)
Close Guantanamo: 0/ 100
Restore Habeas Corpus: 0/ 100
Stop, Punish Torture: 0/ 100
End war against Iraq: 0/ 100
End war in Afghanistan: 0/ 100
As I see it, Obama is--after one year in office--a complete and utter failure. I would rather have a known enemy--McCain--in office than a dishonest friend. It would take some major changes to make me support Obama right now.
He is a very bright and articulate man, but a spineless self-promoter. His ambitions, as he told them to us, were all either lies or things he didn't care about nearly as much as he cared about being president.
My first president was Franklin D. Roosevelt. I have voted in every presidential election since Ike beat Adlai Stevenson. I have campaigned for Stevenson, Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter (the first time), Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barak Obama.
Right now I am as likely to campaign for Barak Obama again as I would be to campaign for Richard Nixon.
Bert Hornback
woensdag 25 november 2009
zaterdag 21 november 2009
JUSTICE FOR ALL--IS THAT WHAT WE WANT?
As the United States Attorney General prepares for the trial of five people held for the past eight years in cages at Guantanamo, Americans are shaming themselves and their country by objecting to their trial.
George W. Bush abolished the constitutional protection of habeas corpus, and nobody--right of left--objected. Now after eight years of unconstitutional imprisonment for several hundred people, President Obama--who promised a year ago to close Guantanamo immediately--finally decides he will bring five of those men to trial. And Americans are outraged.
A U. S. Senator asks the Attorney General if he can "guarantee that these five men will be convicted." Doesn't that idiot Senator even know what law is? or what courts are for?
Americans are busy showing their ugliest underbellies. We are showing the world how utterly uncivilised the United States and its people are.
Shame. Shame on our stupidity and our arrogance. Shame on our lawlessness.
Bert Hornback
George W. Bush abolished the constitutional protection of habeas corpus, and nobody--right of left--objected. Now after eight years of unconstitutional imprisonment for several hundred people, President Obama--who promised a year ago to close Guantanamo immediately--finally decides he will bring five of those men to trial. And Americans are outraged.
A U. S. Senator asks the Attorney General if he can "guarantee that these five men will be convicted." Doesn't that idiot Senator even know what law is? or what courts are for?
Americans are busy showing their ugliest underbellies. We are showing the world how utterly uncivilised the United States and its people are.
Shame. Shame on our stupidity and our arrogance. Shame on our lawlessness.
Bert Hornback
zondag 15 november 2009
JUSTICE
In the United States of America, "Justice" is a dead word. "Law" has no meaning. And the supposedly revered "Constitution" of the United States is nothing more important than crapper-paper, an ass-wipe.
We will not permit anyone to see the evidence that we have of torture and abuse of prisoners. The torture and abuse are violations of international conventions which--in its more civilised days--the United States officially agreed to. Those tortured and abused are being held without being charged with any crimes: this violates the U. S. Constitution.
But George Bush, the rogue president, suspended the right called HABEAS CORPUS--illegally, of course. The president can't suspend the Constitution; to do so is an act of tryanny. And Barack Obama--supposedly a legitimate president and an honorable man--agrees with Bush. So Obama is a rogue as well, a tyrant, an enemy of democracy and the rule of law.
And Americans quietly sit on their hands, watching football games, being selfish, and preparing for the Thanksgiving holiday.
We have no shame. All we have are nuclear weapons, which keep the rest of the world from challenging all our crimes and immoralities.
Bert Hornback
We will not permit anyone to see the evidence that we have of torture and abuse of prisoners. The torture and abuse are violations of international conventions which--in its more civilised days--the United States officially agreed to. Those tortured and abused are being held without being charged with any crimes: this violates the U. S. Constitution.
But George Bush, the rogue president, suspended the right called HABEAS CORPUS--illegally, of course. The president can't suspend the Constitution; to do so is an act of tryanny. And Barack Obama--supposedly a legitimate president and an honorable man--agrees with Bush. So Obama is a rogue as well, a tyrant, an enemy of democracy and the rule of law.
And Americans quietly sit on their hands, watching football games, being selfish, and preparing for the Thanksgiving holiday.
We have no shame. All we have are nuclear weapons, which keep the rest of the world from challenging all our crimes and immoralities.
Bert Hornback
WE THE PEOPLE
Many USers are worried about the Obama government's plan to try five of the detainees from the US concentration camp at Guantanamo. Good Americans, they are worried that the five captives may not be convicted in our courts. Many Americans are afraid of justice, afraid of the rule of law.
It is possible that justice might prevail in the trial of those five men. The evidence against them was likely gained by illegal surveillance, or by torturing them. It won't be admissable in court.
Rather than face that possibility, many USers want to keep those men in prison for the rest of their lives. Many Americans want to "disappear" them. Are there any USers left who remember when Americans responded with horror at the "disappearances" of people in other countries?
Of course, the United States has "disappeared" people for years, thanks to the thugs at CIA and NSA. And for the last nine years we have held hundreds of "disappeared" people at Guantanamo--and still hold them there, a full year after we elected a president who promised to close down that illegal torture camp.
Presumably, the Obama government thinks it has something of a case against these five men. But the other 300? The government must not have a case against any of them; the only thing they may have done wrong was get captured.
"Abandon hope all you who enter here." That's what the sign says as you enter Dante's Hell--or Guantanamo. And if many USers had their way, the motto of the American courts would be what the Artful Dodger thinks ofthe English courts in Dickens's Oliver Twist: "This ain't the shop for justice."
Our patriotic friends and neighbors say, "We can't trust our courts to lynch people."
Americans aren't a people who respect law, or want justice. We aren't even a "we," really. And not believing in justice or society, we aren't a "people."
It is possible that justice might prevail in the trial of those five men. The evidence against them was likely gained by illegal surveillance, or by torturing them. It won't be admissable in court.
Rather than face that possibility, many USers want to keep those men in prison for the rest of their lives. Many Americans want to "disappear" them. Are there any USers left who remember when Americans responded with horror at the "disappearances" of people in other countries?
Of course, the United States has "disappeared" people for years, thanks to the thugs at CIA and NSA. And for the last nine years we have held hundreds of "disappeared" people at Guantanamo--and still hold them there, a full year after we elected a president who promised to close down that illegal torture camp.
Presumably, the Obama government thinks it has something of a case against these five men. But the other 300? The government must not have a case against any of them; the only thing they may have done wrong was get captured.
"Abandon hope all you who enter here." That's what the sign says as you enter Dante's Hell--or Guantanamo. And if many USers had their way, the motto of the American courts would be what the Artful Dodger thinks ofthe English courts in Dickens's Oliver Twist: "This ain't the shop for justice."
Our patriotic friends and neighbors say, "We can't trust our courts to lynch people."
Americans aren't a people who respect law, or want justice. We aren't even a "we," really. And not believing in justice or society, we aren't a "people."
maandag 2 november 2009
Teaching Greed
American universities teach greed.
Never mind that they sometimes teach more "academic" subjects like maths and physics and philosophy, history, chemistry, and literature. Mainly they teach greed.
They teach greed by example. There are now 28 American college presidents who take salaries of $1,000,000 a year, or more. And there are hundreds more who take salaries of $500,000 a year, or more. There are also dozens of football and basketball coaches who take salaries of $1,000,000 or $2,000,000. And how many thousands of vice-presidents and vice-provosts who take salaries of $400,000 or more!
Our students aren't stupid. But they are intellectually and morally vulnerable. And no matter what they learn in their classes about society--and the sciences and social sciences as well as the humanities departments teach about society and social values--our students see the example of their universities' "leaders." And their example is hard to resist, and hard to misinterpret. GREED is what it says. GREED.
Universities in America don't teach their students how to make money, except in "business courses" and "business schools." But American universities teach their students--all their students--to want to make money. That's the goal. That's what students are learning.
How shameful. What an obscenity. What a disservice to humanity. What a destructive undertaking.
Bert Hornback
Never mind that they sometimes teach more "academic" subjects like maths and physics and philosophy, history, chemistry, and literature. Mainly they teach greed.
They teach greed by example. There are now 28 American college presidents who take salaries of $1,000,000 a year, or more. And there are hundreds more who take salaries of $500,000 a year, or more. There are also dozens of football and basketball coaches who take salaries of $1,000,000 or $2,000,000. And how many thousands of vice-presidents and vice-provosts who take salaries of $400,000 or more!
Our students aren't stupid. But they are intellectually and morally vulnerable. And no matter what they learn in their classes about society--and the sciences and social sciences as well as the humanities departments teach about society and social values--our students see the example of their universities' "leaders." And their example is hard to resist, and hard to misinterpret. GREED is what it says. GREED.
Universities in America don't teach their students how to make money, except in "business courses" and "business schools." But American universities teach their students--all their students--to want to make money. That's the goal. That's what students are learning.
How shameful. What an obscenity. What a disservice to humanity. What a destructive undertaking.
Bert Hornback
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