For all intents and purposes, this article could be entitled "Untouchables Beyond Justice" or better yet, "Profiles in Cowardice," At any rate, it begins with the Iraq War, clearly the most idiotic act of the new millennium. The inept and completely deranged George W. Bush administration, totally beyond the reach of human reason, was a lost cause, but Thomas Friedman and much of the staff at the New York Times might have benefited from at least a year of intense psychotherapy after actively promoting the useless act of a prepubescent president. I may never forgive them. Meanwhile, in truth, no politician backing this abomination should ever have been elected to or trusted in any political position!
The abject cowardice of journalists, politicians and the blatant stupidity of so many of my usually intelligent colleagues I found to be disgusting and unforgivable. The abject feeling of "my country right or wrong" represents the exact same excuse used by Nazi enablers in the era of World War II. Not only is the excuse as lame now as it was then, but it is this same attitude that led to the election of a confirmed and despicable coward to the presidency, one who not only actively and repeatedly shirked military responsibility, but who has seen fit to disregard and even scorn both live military heroes and even those killed in defense of their country. While I cannot criticize those who voted for our current president considering that I have already dismissed his opponent's qualification, I do condemn the cowardly schlemiels who continue to support a man who is clearly a fascist willing to destroy virtually all of our democratic institutions in order to exponentially expand his personal fortune and his craven desire for absolute power.
If the George W. Bush administration represented the worst of our country's policies, imperialism, blind stupidity, Wall Street and criminal banks' unchained, uncontrolled politically and religiously motivated prosecutions and perversion of the election system, the Barack Obama experiment, with its overwhelming promise, represented a fizzling firecracker. Yes, in a brief, but unfortunately mismanaged attempt to introduce quality medical coverage to all U.S. citizens, the Affordable Care Act did at least break through the previously impenetrable barrier of national healthcare. However, by not incorporating any Republican Congressional ideas (even if Republicans would not have voted for them), any residual political capital was totally wasted. Meanwhile Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, both somewhat intelligent, but short-sighted highly partisan Democratic leaders, failed to unite the country when they had the opportunity. Who cares if carrying medical insurance across state lines really lowers rates or not, and it wouldn't have hurt if a few bucks thrown into a high-risk fund had been shifted from Medicaid expansion funds.
Actually, the big question is how on earth did the ACA become the signature accomplishment of the Obama presidency? Not that with all of its shortfalls, the ACA is nonetheless a major accomplishment! However, resurrecting an economy from the ashes of the massive conflagration ignited by the blatant stupidity, evil, and utter incompetence of a prepubescent president's administration, one that after purposely starting massive needles wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, proceeded to lower taxes for its fetid political donors, ought to rank as the most significant achievement since victory in World War II! And yet, with his own chronic lack of political guts and foresight, in bailing out the banks, Mr. Obama omitted the caveats necessary to insure their help in the administration of vital sanctions to dangerous foreign governments such as Iran, North Korea, and eventually Russia. Nor did he exercise any pressure on the Federal Reserve to control its squandering of trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars given freely to crooked European banks to be distributed to brand-new oligarchs instead of their governments and citizens. Instead, Harry Reid had to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in bribes to a dozen or so traitors in the other "House" to pass any bill at all to save the economy. What a tribute to the scum we Americans were so happy to elect even before the advent of the rotting "Freedom Carcass" and the catatonic "zombie apocalypse" they so desperately look forward to.
Meanwhile, the fight for legitimate prices for pharmaceuticals was quickly abandoned by Mr. Obama as was the obvious need to incrementally cut corporate taxes in a bipartisan move, hopefully tying the cuts to some sort of wage increases: more political capital into the garbage disposal. Reticent to use the bully pulpit for the good of the people, he also failed to expose the shameful Bush "Retarded Religionist, Born Again Last Night and Never Should have Been Born in the First Place" Injustice Department. Instead, he even appointed as attorney general his uncle, Eric (better known as "Tom") Holder, chief Democratic Bush sympathizer and defender, so instrumental in insuring the election of "W" in 2000 by refusing to arrest Jeb Bush and accomplice Katherine Harris for purposely "forging" the names of thousands of innocent, mostly black voters onto a bogus list of felons, thereby depriving them of the right to vote. Holder also conveniently neglected to investigate Ohio's dirty secretary of state, Ken Blackwell, and Karl Rove and their involvement in fixing the 2004 presidential election as well as the convenient death of primary witness, RNC IT expert Michael Connell, and the equally convenient "misplacement" of his incriminating blackberry.
In addition, Mr. Obama's "fearless" attorney general, as well as his two cowardly U.S. Supreme Court picks, were apparently all handsomely rewarded for not stirring up trouble by passing on virtually every one of the "W" judicial atrocities, including the blatant framing of Don Siegelman by totally "unethical" so-called "Christian" federal prosecutors in Alabama. Unfortunately, in today's political arena the two terms are most often synonymous. Except for the Sojourners and Jimmy Carter and a few others, far too many evangelicals seem to have abandoned the real Jesus for some inferior deity who spends most of his time sitting on a jeweled throne with strange little faerie creatures twittering in the air around him while he judges people by the disgusting concept of "grace." In other words, after calculating how much praise an individual has heaped upon Him, he flips a coin to decide his victim's fate, just like any mentally ill human king would do.
Meanwhile, just how hypocritical are Trump fans? Is there any one of the miscreant's supporters who really believes that our fearless leader, after admitting that he gets faint at the site of blood, would actually run into the Parkman High School building to save those children from a gunman? Running one's mouth is not exactly the same as running a government, nor is using one's thumbs instead of one's brain to tweet unsubstantiated "factoids" by pseudo journalists on Fox News. Does anyone seriously believe that this proudly and equally prepubescent ignorant, pompous fool with his five-second attention span could possibly have dug us out of the enormous economic hole created by "W"? How, by picking the same worthless institutions and "human" beings (a loose term, I assure you) who created the problems to begin with to solve them and simply resurrecting the same policies that almost destroyed us? You bet! That's the plan.
Don't worry, when things go bad again, we can blame immigrants and if that doesn't fly, we can blame American workers for wanting higher wages. If that doesn't work, we can privatize Medicare and Social Security, shifting the colossal "reinsurance" burdens to the federal government, thus guaranteeing the insurance companies literally trillions of dollars in absolutely FREE money, courtesy of every single U.S. citizen, be they an intellectually challenged Republican/Democrat or simply the blatantly mathematically challenged Paul Ryan who never learned to count without his fingers and toes or EPA chief Pruitt who never learned how to read or write, requiring oil- and gas-industry lobbyists to ghost write all of his letters and statements. Yes, folks, we're in good hands and most of all, we deserve the scum for whom we so often vote.
Al Finkelstein, 5/25/18
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