Obama Will Tell You Anything

Probably one of the most memorable broken campaign promises in modern history was the First George Bush promising that under no circumstances would he raise taxes. He even said we should "read my lips" as he told this lie. Of course he raised taxes. It was more than just a broken campaign promise; he ran his campaign on it. Voters trusted him. So when the betrayal finally sunk in, he did not go back to the White House. His Democrat rival, Bill Clinton did. That wasn't too long ago. So many can remember it. George Bush was deemed unworthy of a second term in office because he told a lie during his campaign, or he did not live up to a promise he made. One can easily argue that the two are not the same, but I believe the result would have been the same for Bush. Maybe it was when he dared us to "Read my lips." I suppose he shouldn't have taken it so far with that display of false certainty. His Democrat rival certainly kept a tape of that campaign pledge, which he played over and over again for months, until finally it was apparent that Bush was indeed a one-termer.

Is Barack Obama a one-termer and for the same reason as Bush? Because it is clear that Obama has broken at least a half dozen crucial campaign promises and he is only half-way through his first term. Even the Dr. Strangelove of vice presidents, Dick Cheney, admitted the other day that Obama is doing essentially what he and Bush did in terms of national security. And he is right. Obama hasn't changed one thing. We are still at war with one nation and supposedly pulling out of a war with another. The internal security forces of the U.S.have become even more Orwellian. It is not untrue to say that the intelligence services in this nation have the ability to make you disappear overnight. Forever. Last time (before now,of course) I was in a nation like that, it was East Germany, the Berlin Wall was still there, and the USSR was fighting what everyone agreed was a losing war in Afghanistan.

That brings us to a first broken promise.

Obama said he would get rid of the internal security that allows police agencies to break into our homes when they are empty, search them, and leave again, without ever telling anyone they were there. Obama has just strengthened, not weakened the hand of internal security. Broken promise number two. Obama said he would allow the tax break for the super rich to run out. He didn't. He extended it.

Broken promise number three. Obama said he would come up with a health insurance program that mandated a single payer plan. He did not. The reason he didn't is simple. Obama is in the White House today for two reasons. One is that you voted for him. Another, more important reason, is that the banks paid for his campaign. He is still paying them off in trillions of dollars. Hand-in-hand with the banks are their buddies the insurance companies. Obama won't do anything to hurt them. Still, during his campaign he said he would allow Canadian drugs into America and provide the American drug companies with some "competition". Well, he lied. His health care plan expressly forbids a single-payer option, which he promised it would, and it also forbids the use of drugs from Canada, although in many cases the drugs in Canada are actually made here and sold there for less. The Veterans Administration uses drugs from Canada and spends pennies on the dollar for them. But Obama would rather lie to you and say he was going to allow competition than actually do it and risk the loss of campaign contributions from the drug companies for he and his pals in Congress.

Obama broke another (The numbers are irrelevant) campaign promise this week when he decided to try the remaining Gitmo prisoners by military tribunal. In the past Obama had said that there was no use for a third system of justice in this country. We have two. Civil justice and military justice, usually by courts martial. But this military tribunal system is not about justice and no one who goes through it will receive justice. Worse yet, Obama, constitutional law professor that he is, knows this. What was all the rhetoric against the Bush presidency about? We all heard it during the campaign, when Gitmo was presented by Obama as a kind of American disgrace, where people were already believed guilty before they were tried. We'll he, Barack Obama wasn't going to allow that to happen. At least not until yesterday - when he changed his mind.

Obama's lies are taking American politics down a very dangerous path. First he contradicts his own rhetoric against Bush, assigning some "evidence" of bi-partisan "truth" to it . Now he has basically changed his mind on nearly everything and has become the Bush-Cheney administration - or a pretty good likeness of it. The effect is damaging to the core definition of democracy, that people with different ideas can govern together. Obama has shown an unwillingness to fight for what he has said were his ideas - if they ever were his ideas

A former governor of New York once said something like "Political campaigning is poetry. Governing is prose," and some are saying similar things now as an excuse for Obama. But there is another way to look at Obama, one that is usually the territory of the far right or politial nuts. But let's just look at the facts. Almost three million jobs have been lost since Obama came on board. The power of financial institutions to shape our democracy is out of the closet. Obama is America's banker, and a terrible banker at that, with more debt than any bank on earth. He has made several attempts to decrease unemployment, but so far, he has failed.

So far it has all been empty rhetoric.

I voted for him. But as a president he has been untruthful, almost to a Nixonian extent, and as a president he is horrible.

I can remember his campaign promises to "level the playing field" with China in our trade practices. He hasn't. We send goods to China, they want a 25 percent tariff. They send goods to us, we accept 2.5 percent tariff. China continues to artificially undervalue its currency. This gives them a tremendous advantage against us,because everything they sell costs less than if you paid for it in U.S. dollars. The unfairness in our trade relationship is so apparent that it seems like once every couple of weeks another author writes a book about it.

Gary Locke, the U.S. Commerce Secretary claims that Mr. Obama "is focusing" on the problem with China. But the last time I saw him he was eating rib eye steak with China's top dog at the White House. Meanwhile China is building up its military, especially in the weapon's technology area. They announced just recently that they had a stealth fighter plane and sent us a photo of it. This is after we decided to stop building our stealth fighter planes because China had announced that they were not interested in developing one. They now have missiles that can take out our satellites. This isn't science fiction.

They have a missile system, completely new, that is designed to sink every aircraft carrier in our fleet. They continue to sell goods to the Iranians that can be used in their nuclear program. They continue to refuse to help us in our relations with North Korea. Some wonder why we don't use the considerable leverage we have against China. Just raise the tariffs and what are they going to do? There isn't much they can do. Frankly the trade deficit with China has been exaggerated and would not prevent the U.S. from raising its tariffs.

Meanwhile it becomes clear that Obama will tell us anything - if he thinks it will improve his position with the voter. So far, it is working. One has to envision, however, the parade of political ads depicting Obaba's contradictions that will begin to appear sooner than we'd like. How is Obama going to answer these charges of duplicity? George Bush the First had one unkept promise to answer to - taxes. Obama has dozens.