Link: /Obama-Watch.com

Jim Houle - Editor
45th Edition - January 29th, 2012

The Propaganda Buildup to Regime Change in Syria has gone on since last spring but almost no one in the US pays much attention. Partly this is because the stories that are floated on the air waves sound so much like the usual buildup to war: whether it be the NATO intervention in Libya last year, the recent Somalia intervention, or the Iraqi invasion back in 2003. The Syrian dictator Bashar Assad has kept most foreign journalists out and we are left with precious little of that bloody street fighting video our bored TV watchers can sink their chops into. When we tried to enter southern Syria ourselves last May, the border was suddenly closed while the Army proceeded to shoot unarmed protesters in the southern town of Daraa.

Last November, our Arab League vassals got President Assad to invite 165 “observers”, wearing those orange vests that highway workers normally wear around here, to see what Assad was doing. Their mission expired recently and there was little enthusiasm to risk further stray bullets on the streets. They were unsuccessful in curbing the bloodshed and opposition groups within Syria felt they had merely whitewashed the Assad regime's suppression. A spokesman for the Syrian National Council, Burban Ghalioun, complained that: “conditions did not allow observers to submit an objective report”. Nevertheless, the Qatar foreign minister bravely stated: “We are with the Syrian people and with their will and their aspirations” ( NYT -1/22) and wanted foreign troops to enter so long as they were not Qataris. Most of the Arab League seems to want the UN to bail them out and apply a little white wash to the rebellion, as had worked so well in Libya. Nevertheless, a smaller contingent went back to Syria last week to monitor conditions in the restive city of Rankous near the Lebanese border from which the government had earlier withdraw its troops. The observers never made it into town. One member of the team said that Syrian Army officers sitting astride a ring of tanks shelling the deserted town told them it was too dangerous, even with those orange vests. The head of the Arab League, Nabil al-Araby, said the 22-member body decided to suspend the monitors’ mission in Syria because of “a severe deterioration in the situation and the continued use of violence.” (Had they expected a meshoui – a ceremonial young camel roast?)

Will Israel Be Pleased By Regime Change?
We ask if there is any benefit to the United States, or to our dearest ally Israel, in setting Assad aside. He has not threatened his neighbors, has not taken arms against Israel in 45 years and has not pushed very hard for the return of the Golan Heights as ordered by UN Security Council Resolution Number 242 after its seizure by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War. Syria has admittedly operated independently of the United States and supported the Hezbullah in Lebanon in the transit of weapons and missiles from Iran for defense of their southern border. Yet the Assads, father and son, have cooperated in arresting Al Qaeda agents for the CIA, in the clandestine imprisonment and torture of US prisoners shipped abroad, and actually supported the US with troops in that wonderfully short 1991 Gulf War. However, if we replace Bashar with an even more cooperative ruler, we may further isolate Iran, perhaps bring Turkey into the US regional alliance, suppress Hezbullah activity in Lebanon, and grease the skids for Lebanon's conversion to another US client state.

It might please Israel by eliminating the last unfriendly Arab country on their border, although it seems more difficult every day to please the Israelis. Such a regime change would be costly and probably lengthy, for Syria is better armed, more centrally controlled than Libya, and more than twice the size of little Libya. The United States military and economic muscle may not be able to handle another war front just now. Even if replaced, could the next regime harness, as well as Bashar Assad has, those who would make trouble on the Israeli border and would it be worth all the bother just now when Tel Aviv is so taken up with the threat of a nuclear Iran?

Who Wants Regime Change?
France, always willing to do what they can to buff-up their tarnished glory as protector of Greater Lebanon and Syria, asks: “How about Another No Fly Zone?” We do remember, surely, how this NATO tactic eliminated Libya's air force and turned much of Tripoli into a pile of rubble, all under the guise of protecting civilian lives. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls for Syrian regime change and predicts a civil war but does not exactly sign on to the no-fly zone tactic complete with the saturation bombing that this would likely bring about. Phillip Giraldi, a former CIA man, (American Conservative – Jan.18th) claims that there are contingents of French and British Special Forces on the ground already in Syria along with Italian and US/CIA communications specialists. However, the claim that defectors from the Syrian Army are a big factor in the rebellion is mainly a fabrication in Giraldi's view and no one seriously raises the fear that our old bugaboo Al Qaeda will rise again - that's really yesterday's news.

In back offices at the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom, neo-con holdovers have continued to feed a thin stream of stories about armed skirmishes and unsubstantiated civilian murders by the Syrian Army. The Foreign Policy Initiative, a neo-con think tank headed by William Krystal since the mid 1990s, has published: “Towards a Post Assad Syria”, Nov. 8, 2011, by Martin Indyk and John Hannah. Their rumours have included everything from fears of Turkish intrusion across northern borders to suggestions that massive amounts of left-over weapons are being airlifted to Turkish military bases from Libya. In the Asian Times, Aisling Byrne quotes them as saying: “the first stage of war in Iran is Syria: Nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria”. King Abdullah, our Saudi Vassal, opines that: “Syria has a long history of exporting terrorism beyond its borders and is a dangerous enemy of the United States” but the old king has always had a very esoteric set of informants. UN Ambassador Susan Rice, always righteous and eager to pile on, is sure that: “Syria is an urgent moral challenge and a growing threat to regional peace and security”. Robert Fisk, the Beiruti correspondent for London's Independent, says there is “no doubt that weapons are pouring into Syria from Assad's enemies in Lebanon” but he presents no evidence for this whatsoever and we have heard of no battles with well-equipped rebel groups yet. The presence of the 6th Fleet carrier George H.W. Bush bobbing around out there in the Western Mediterranean alongside Russia's lone aircraft carrier Kusnetsov, makes one wonder if we have not both been feeding the war monster once again. President Bashar Assad claims that foreign elements are causing all of his troubles. Turkey is definitely acting as a US military proxy prepared to invade when given the right signal (Ahmed Davit – Turkish Foreign Minister per Phillip Giraldi, Jan 12).

Just How Bad Is Dictator Assad?
Barbara Walters says that Bashar Assad is really a mild-mannered ophthal­mologist and very squeamish about blood. He released political prisoners upon taking power and instituted economic reforms and some modernizations. He was called back reluctantly from a quiet medical practice in London when his older brother Basil, the next in line, killed himself in a drunken auto crash in 1994. Next year, Bashar will preside over the fiftieth year of the Assad Dynasty in Syria. Always brutal in its repression of free speech and democracy, it has actually been a model of social peace, managing a stable country with poor but functional institutions, relatively safe cities, and a bustling life at least in the urban areas (Bassam Haddad: Director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Mason University in Aaliyah, Jan 18th). The withdrawal of state subsidies, economic mismanagement, and heavy favoritism towards the business class, have all eroded this stability recently. GDP grew at an impressive 3.2 % last year but is expected to now drop 2% (The Progressive: Reese Erich: Jan.2012). The country is ruled by the Alawites, a splinter Shi'ite religious faction that represents only 13 % of the population but are a well-disciplined political bloc. Sunni moslems make up the majority of the population and Christians comprise 10%.

While we can demand the downfall of authoritarianism, for the Syrians it has kept foreign intervention at bay, and prevented their becoming just another in our regional collection of client states. Syria has been one of the safest place on earth with no confrontations with Israel since 1982 when Israel stole the Shubra Farms during their withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Yet the Assads have supported Hezbullah and Hamas and somehow remain the only anti-imperialist Arab nation in the region. The opposition within Syria has not so far taken its cues from anyone outside Syria. The Syrian National Council, based outside Syria is the only opposition group that calls for outside intervention. Henry Kissinger argues that we should let the Syrians kill each other and not intervene directly. “Intervention is not seriously on the table yet” he grumbles.

While The New York Times has encouraged regime change, even they were forced to admit, in several articles, that there have been massive rallies in Syria in support of the government. "The turnout of tens of thousands in Sabaa Bahrat Square once again underlined the degree of backing that Mr. Assad and his leadership still enjoy seven months into the popular uprising. That support is especially pronounced in cities like Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s two largest" (Jan.13). This was further confirmed by a poll funded by the anti-Assad Qatar Foundation: " Syrians are supportive of their president with 55% not wanting him to resign" (Jan.2). If people in Syria do not want foreign intervention — a likely reason that so many attended pro-Assad demonstrations. This 55% was an increase from 46% that had earlier thought Assad a good president. No Main Stream Media in the US have bothered to report this however – it upsets the prevailing narrative. Even Stratfor, a conservative Intelligence Think Tank, said that “most of the opposition's more serious claims have proven grossly exaggerated or simply untrue.” and warned that Syrian Observatory should be viewed with skepticism. CIA has refused to sign off on the estimates of 3500 to 5400 killed that the UN Secretary General has been repeating. What about the so-called Free Syrian Army, which claims to speak for the Syrian people?  Like its Libyan counterpart, it appears to be yet another Made-in-the-USA militant group, by means of our ally Turkey, a fact alluded to by the pro U.S.-establishment magazine, Foreign Affairs. They ask: "Why does the Syrian military not fire upon their Free Syrian Army positions or launch a large-scale assault? The FSA fighters are positioned about a mile from the Turkish border, near enough to escape across if the situation turned dire."  Major Maher Numeiri speaking for the Free Syrian Army admits that “we do not have the arsenal necessary to confront the Assad regime directly”.

The Rumble for War and the Demands We Not Interfere
Syria has allies in Algeria, Iraq, Russia and China. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for intervention this past December and Syrian analyst Peter Harling warns that: “We have not seen anything this ominous in 15 years.” Demands for economic sanctions have been blocked by Russia and China at the UN. Correspondent Franklin Lamb in Beirut doubts their real effectiveness: “The history going back to Iraq and before shows that sanctions are not really effective in changing the behavior of a regime” (RT – 4 Dec 2011). The British based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, funded by Dubai with Saudi money, has published months of unsubstantiated data on civilians killed by Assad as well has the Syrian Transitional Council. No checking on these claims at hospitals and morgues inside Syria has been possible.

Petrodollar Implications
Pepe Escobar in the Asian Times 1/20 reports that the Gulf Counter-revolutionary Council, as he calls the GCC, supports the petrodollar dollar and supplies the world market with 25% of all oil. US supplies $120 billion in armaments to GCC, presumably to counter Iran. China wants to make more investments in the Middle East including Syria, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Iraq and Iran. The Saudis already export more oil to China than they do to the US. China could well propose to buy Saudi oil for Petro-Yuan instead of Petrodollars since there appears to be less and less advantage to the Saudis in the US Petrodollar Alliance as both the Dollar and the Euro weaken further.

We find it difficult to find any serious justification for pushing Assad Aside just now other than as a means to stimulate production of war materiel by the US military-industrial complex at a time when our domestic economy is wobbling.

OBAMA-WATCH.COM
44th EDITION: December 19th 2011
Jim Houle Editor

Oh how easily we are all deceived:
Iraqi Smoking Guns and Mushroom Clouds; The Libyan rebels are all Freedom Fighters;
The Lands of Judea and Samaria (commonly called Palestine) belong to the Jewish people forever;
Iran is well advanced in building a nuclear bomb to wipe out Israel;
Good King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia sends a thousand tanks across the causeway to help little Bahraini King Hamid al Khalifa suppress democracy on a small island where the 70% Shi'ites are ruled by Sunnis royals who control most of the wealth; (Hillary Clinton wrings her hand noiselessly but makes no protest).
Pfc. Bradley Manning goes on trial for releasing confidential (not Top Secret) State Department cables that the government initially dismissed as well-known and not news.

Something is Rotten in Libya: Forty-eight hours after Hillary Clinton lands in Tripoli and calls for “Gadhafi to be captured or killed as soon as possible”, he is captured and brutally assassinated by the TNC. (Ruppee News 11-13-11). TNC is the Transitional National Council we stacked with ex-CIA operatives, a few al-Qaeda types, MI 5s from Whitehall, and assorted bag men. NATO was authorized by the UN (Resolution 1973, 3-17-11) to impose a “No Fly Zone” so as to protect civilians being threatened by Gadhafi in Benghazi and to immobilize Gadhafi's air defenses. The US and its allies subsequently hit 5900 targets in 9700 sorties and left much of the country in ruins.(NYTimes survey 12-18-11). NATO and the UN admit scores of unarmed casualties but won't come up with a death toll. This demolition derby took a mere 240 days. By comparison, Qadhafi had worked for 40 years to increase oil revenues to far more of the people than in most other countries. Individual income rose from $34 per year to $34,000 to day and the people have the best medical care and lowest infant mortality rates in all of Africa. The UN Human Rights Council commended Libya in its 2010 report for its remarkable progress. When confronted with grisly videos of Myomar Gadhafi's death, our own Hillary Rodham Clinton giggled “We came, we saw, he died.”(Christian Amanpour, ABC and Franklin Lamb of RT). The TNC 'democratic rebels' as we like to call them, after having assured Gadhafi's convoy of safe passage, then called in NATO bombers and then captured, tortured and brutally murdered him. The UN Human Rights Commission, the Russian Foreign Minister, Human Rights Watch and many others called for an investigation of this gross violation of the Geneva Convention concerning the rights of POWs. Hillary supported the investigation and showed not a trace of shame.

Smelly Suppression In Egypt: Hilary has just delivered our yearly $2.0 billion bribe to the Egyptian military junta to make sure they thoroughly suppress the democracy movement in Tahrir Square and do not allow a vote on a new Constitution for at least six months. This weekend, the Junta denied using force against protesters despite the many frightening videos including one showing a woman with her hajib pulled off and police clubbing her half-clothed body. There is no image in Arab society that could be more damning than this one. Better the police merely plead that their limited budget does not provide high speed internet service. Instead their media adviser, a retired general named Abdel Kato, accused the protesters of being “delinquents who deserve to be thrown in Hitler's ovens”. I begin to believe that it was Mubarak that actually kept the lid on these fascist lunatics.

Putrefaction in Yemen, Pakistan and Iraq: Obama made a drone Predator attack in Yemen with Hellfire missiles on New Mexico-born US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 year old son (born in Denver). The grandfather of the family, a Fullbright scholar, protested this violation of the 5th and 6th Amendments to our US Constitution. Earlier President Obama announced to a nation-wide audience on TV (5-1-10) that US Navy Seals had killed an unarmed Osamah Bin Ladin in a “firefight”in Pakistan. (Note that the FBI has never brought charges against bin Ladin for 9/11 because of a lack of evidence). The tradition of violating human rights was well demonstrated by former President Bush back in 2006 when he arranged a kangaroo court in Baghdad to hang Rumsfeld's good buddy Saddam Hussein, without the benefit of a real defense in court nor the ability to bring forth evidence, witnesses, or any of our other revered Constitutional safeguards.

Something is Very Rotten in Washington: President Obama has reneged on his promise just last week to veto the Military Appropriations Bill. A rider attached to this big money bill allows American citizens to be arrested on suspicion of involvement in terrorism (undefined) in the United States or abroad, denied civil trials, and held in military brigs indefinitely without charges. There goes the 5th and 6th Amendments to the Bill of Rights once again! The so-called Homeland Battlefield provisions in the newly passed $662-billion defense authorization bill generated a surprisingly wide range of legal interpretations. There was a brief moment when civil libertarians were stunned to see President Barack Obama actually take a stand in favor of civil liberties after several years of rolling back the basic rights of citizens. Obama said that he would veto the defense bill if it contained a provision for the indefinite detention of American citizens by the Army: “The military does not patrol our streets” he lectured. While many predicted it, Obama has once again betrayed the civil liberties community and lifted the threat of the veto. Americans will now be subject to indefinite military detention and denied trial in federal courts. (Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley RSN (12-15-11).

The White House is now saying that changes to the law made it unnecessary to veto the legislation. With that ridiculous explanation, the administration went into full spin control, using language designed to obscure the authority just handed to the military. “I am not sure which is worse: the loss of core civil liberties or the almost mocking post hoc rationalization for abandoning principle” says Jonathon Turley. The Pentagon brass, the CIA, the State Department and 4 retired generals all opposed this as “strip-mining of your freedom to resist tyranny”. (R.Nader, 1-14-11). Once the Senate approved it 93 to 7 and the House to 286 to 136, Obama, our latest 'profile in courage' caved, explaining that he had found a loophole that allowed him not to enforce this unconstitutional incarceration except when he really had it in for someone. (Oh the wonders of a Harvard education!)

Something is Really Rotten in Damascus: We watch the turmoil in Syria, unable to sort the white hats from the black. France suggests another NATO no-fly zone, pleased as they were with the wide-spread demolition this tactic produced in Libya. A media build-up is underway to explain to us how that Evil Bashir Assad, previously a innocuous opthamologist in London, is employing snipers to kill civilians on the streets. “What's taking place is an attempt by the Arab League to accommodate the US and NATO against one of the few states in the Arab world that still says “no” to US influence.” (Professor Franklin Lamb: RT 12-2-11) The Arab League is dominated by rich US client states such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates, Qatar, Oman and even poor Egypt. The UN High Commission for Human Rights, another willing US handmaiden these days, has put the death toll in Syria at 5,000 and recommended International Criminal Court action (the US is not a member). The Ambassador of the Universal Peace Foundation has called for a dialogue but “it seems that the West has taken the position that there can be no dialogue with the Evil Eye Doctor. The West is seeking a new regime in Syria as a tool to implement its own strategic interests in the region”. (RT.Com. 12-12-11) Arabic-speaking US soldiers, assured they were returning home from Iraq, have been transferred in dead of night to the Jordanian/Syrian border. (Sibel Edmond's Boiling Frog Post: 12-13-11). Turkish troops are also alleged to be gearing up for an assault across the Syrian border. Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reports that materiel from Gadhafi's abandoned arsenals and unmarked NATO aircraft are being ferried into Iskenderun, Turkey. The American Conservative reports that the CIA even refused to 'sign off' on the UN report of 3500 to 5000 killed in Syria because it is uncorroborated. They also discount mass defections from the Army, widely reported in the US, as a fabrication with few defections confirmed independently. We have found in the past that in circumstances like this, with almost no journalists allowed on the ground, rumors are easily constructed and quickly spread because visits to hospitals and morgues are blocked and access to soldiers and civilian observers refused. “Syrian government claims that it is being assaulted by rebels armed, trained and financed by foreign governments are more true than false” says Giraldi.

Something is Rotten in Denmark: So why do I quote Shakespear's Hamlet about the rottenness in Denmark? Upon Hamlet's return from university in England, he found his father poisoned, his mother quickly married off to the poisoner, Hamlet's uncle, and two of his best college friends bribed to arrange for Hamlet's death once he returns to university. His abuse of his love Ophelia has driven her to suicide. He has confronted evil and rottenness within his royal family and within himself. He finds no way to right all these wrongs, nor to escape the horror and the weakness that he sees most clearly within himself. He goes mad. Perhaps this will be our exit strategy as well. President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, who died this week in Prague said: “Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.”

”The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!”

OBAMA-WATCH.COM
43rd EDITION
September 7, 2011
Jim Houle, Editor

Our nation-wide shock on September 11th, 2001 at seeing those two airliners penetrate the World Trade Center towers generated a sense of fear and vulnerability deep within our psyches. Seizing upon this, our national leaders convinced us that we must attack Afghanistan and Iraq, where those Al Qaeda terrorists allegedly came from. The majority of Americans still feel vulnerable to terrorist attack and have accepted that we must live in a era of endless war without any coherent rationale. Ten years later, these unending Pentagon battles abroad have become, in the words of the Washington Post's Sept. 5th editorial, our only growth industry. In a declining job market, they represent one of our very few successful jobs programs, employing everyone from GIs to weapons assemblers, from drone makers to private “security” firms protecting our occupiers abroad and taking on tasks our soldiers cannot do. No politician, including Barack Obama, will seriously challenge our huge military-industrial complex, nor question the Pentagon's brilliant propaganda machine that manufactures those new “enemies” we continually must find to justify our ever expanding war program with its enormous profits. Imagine how the Los Angeles Basin would collapse overnight into Depression should the war machine stop ordering new weapons from Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics.

Fear-Based Economics
Now, ten years after September 11th 2001, when 2606 innocent office workers were deliberately murdered, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth believes it is time to seriously examine how these people actually died and if their deaths were really necessary. Why now do the A&E 9/11 Truth people bring this up, after much of the evidence of that day's disaster has been destroyed or well hidden, and when Americans are fully burdened by their need for economic survival? It seems to many that the very shaky story of the 9/11 attack by foreign terrorists upon our Homeland was too quickly accepted by a public driven by fear and is still used as the rationale for our abject surrender to the war machine that drives our entire economy. We have since learned that none of the 19 alleged hijackers were Iraqis or Afghanis, but we invaded those countries anyway. The 19 alleged hijackers actually included 15 Saudi Arabian citizens, 2 from the Emirates, one from Egypt and one from Lebanon.

Keeping Fear Alive
During the past decade, A&E 9/11Truth, an organization of over 1500 Professional Architects and Engineers from all over the United States associated with 12,400 other supporters, have signed The 9/11 Truth Petition calling for a new and independent investigation of one key element of the 9/11 mythology. These engineers and architects, of whom I am one, do not believe that the two 110 story towers and the nearby 44 story WTC-7 building could have each fallen in less than 12 seconds, essentially in free fall merely as a result of the fires ignited by the crash of two airliners and the burn off of their jet-fuel. We find it very disturbing that official investigations have failed to address the extensive evidence of planted explosive devices and incendiaries that likely contributed to the fall of these buildings. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency that so thoroughly botched up New Orleans flood relief, supervised the wholesale destruction of 9/11 evidence prior to the official investigation and contrary to the recommendations of the National Fire Protection Association. FEMA quickly loaded 200,000 tons of structural steel on barges and shipped it off to India and China for recycling. Only a few hundred pieces are now available as forensic evidence showing the high temperature incineration of steel girders that could never have been ignited by the jet fuel on the planes. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) deliberately excluded many relevant facts from their report, such as the presence of chemical residues, particles of un-ignited incendiaries, nanothermite, and molten metal in the wreckage in their rush to close the books on this disaster.

An Investigation Designed To Fail
The 9/11 Commission was unable to explain away the collapse of neighboring WTC-7 eight hours later and therefore conveniently ignored it in their final report. The Bush 9/11 Commission was headed by Governor Thomas Kean of New Jersey and Congressman Lee Hamilton, who after allowing publication of the final Commission Report, wrote their own book trying to disassociate themselves from the official findings. They called it “an investigation designed to fail”. However, many Americans still believe that on 9/11 19 Al Qaeda terrorists were able, without outside help, to reduce the World Trade Center to a pile of smoldering debris in seconds and this mythical story continues to justify our unending wars in the Middle East.

We at Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth have limited our investigations to as examination of evidence concerning the unexplained free-fall of these three Manhattan skyscrapers in seconds. We have not indulged in speculation about who actually planned and executed the 9/11 attacks in New York, nor have we studied the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon that same day. The Pentagon and our intelligence agencies have refused to release the 80 sets of film they seized of the United Flight 93 crash nor allowed eye witnesses to be interviewed. Until they do, independent investigation of the Pentagon crash cannot get very far and the truth will remain hidden. Some learned analysts point to lack of any new attacks upon our Homeland as proof that our policies in Iraq and Afghanistan have been successful.

We believe that there is now sufficient evidence to conclude that World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2 and 7 were destroyed not by jet impacts and the burning off of jet fuel but by controlled demolition with explosives. We therefore call upon Congress to initiate a new investigation with full subpoena powers. We feel that America can no longer be held hostage by the government's absurd stories as justification for our continuing open-ended wars in the Middle East. Our work is dedicated to the victims and to the families of those who died on September 11th 2001 and to all throughout the world who have been affected, including the hundreds of New Yorkers still dying of cancer as a result of breathing the smoke and dust generated that day. If you are interested in learning more, in signing our petition, and perhaps joining in this effort, you will find additional materials including DVDs available at: www.911Truth.org.

42nd Edition
August 6, 2011

Jim Houle - Editor

“The $2.5 trillion deficit-reduction deal brokered by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner, and President Barack Obama is grotesquely unfair. It's also bad economic policy. In the midst of a terrible recession, it will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. At a time when the wealthiest people in this country are doing extremely well, and when their effective tax rate is the lowest in decades, the rich are not required to contribute one penny more for deficit reduction. When corporate profits are soaring and many giant corporations avoid federal income taxes because of obscene loopholes in the tax code, corporate America will not be asked to contribute one penny more for deficit reduction. On the other hand, working families, children, the sick and the elderly - many of whom are already suffering because of the recession - will shoulder the entire burden:” Senator Bernie Saunders of Vermont (Aug.5, 2011).

Selling the American People a Totally Deceptive Message
The forces of the right have managed to guide the American people into a sense of helplessness, lethargy and stupid complacency. We have been told that: (1) the rising national deficit is our most serious problem today; (2) taxes are sapping the initiative of our business community; (3) we have to cut domestic spending because increasing the taxes on the wealthy individuals just gives the government more money to spend; (4) we cannot afford to cut defense spending, for this would only lower our guard against those terrorists who would invade our shores and steal our freedom; (5) entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are out of control and increasing our national debt; and (6) that if we were to plug tax loopholes on those businesses that contribute so much to our economic leadership in the world, we will inhibit them from expansion and from the creation of new jobs. Yet Noam Chomsky (Survey of International Policy Attitudes,Truthout, 5 August, 2011) insists that corporate power's ascendency over politics, society and both major political parties has moved corporations far to the right of the population which actually overwhelmingly favor taxing the rich, cutting defense spending, promoting education and protecting Social Security.

Slipping From Recession to Depression
Consumer spending is dropping relentlessly because people have less in their pocket and are afraid of the future. The Administration touted the 117,000 new jobs added in July, but carefully avoided mentioning that 175,000 new entry-level workers had hit the streets that same month looking for work. The total number of the unemployed actually rose. True unemployment hovers at 20% with no sign of recovery shown in the past 36 months, (No half-intelligent economist pays any attention to the thoroughly monkeyed numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing 9.1 %). Even the Wall Street Journal (8/8/11) does not expect any improvement in the jobs picture this year. Annual economic growth in the nation has slipped down to 1.3%, well below the Administration's forecast of 1.8% rise this year. Home ownership is at its lowest level since 1965 (CNN Money 8/8/11). We are well into the second dip of what could well be a real depression or a least very prolonged recession. Yet the debate is all about cutting spending.

So, What Did Roosevelt Do?
Franklin Delano Roosevelt demonstrated near the end of the Great Depression what Keynesian Economy Theory had explained and Republicans and Democrats have since employed whenever they thought about it at all: If economic stagnation is the problem, then put money out there to create public projects, create jobs, rebuild our crumbling bridges and roads, and watch the economy rebuild and expand. The vast majority of practicing economists today support this strategy, yet we are experiencing “the most drastic curtailment of public spending* in American history” (Chossudovsky, Global Research, 4 August, 2011). (*Please note that “public spending” as used here does not include defense spending nor corporate welfare (TARP) to the very large banks, where we have never before spent so much public money, even during WW II, and with so little measurable gain).

The conservative Tea Party cabal does not want to consider economic theory, it just complicates their simple, righteous rant that runs: “you can't spend what you do not have, the federal budget is no different than our family accounts.” Nor do they want to understand the truth that Social Security funds actually belong to the workers who paid in a portion of their paycheck and cannot be stolen away by Congress or Obama now. They do not comprehend that Social Security is not a part of the national debt. Oh my, that really confounds them.

Obama – What Have You Done To Your Voters?
Obama told us in his first State of the Union message (Jan. 2009) that a 2nd New Deal was in the wind: he promised us a program to rebuild our economy through spending on education, health, housing, renewable energy, and infrastructure programs. Then 2 1/2 years later on the night of August 2nd , he approved a rise in the debt ceiling from $14.3 trillion to over $15 trillion next year and promised us a mammoth austerity program. He agreed to cut $2.5 trillion over the next ten years from domestic programs like schools, roads, health case, and housing. As a concession, he was allowed to make just a little $3 billion cut in spending over a next two years, letting the really painful cutbacks impact us later. He calls this “a first step in solving the deficit crisis” but he apparently cannot see that long term reduction of the federal deficit requires a major near term economic stimulus. Rather, the Obama people feel that such small first year cuts in spending will “avoid harming the recovery” (White House 8/5/11) and still will allow the President to campaign in 2012 explaining how he is all in favor of austerity without anyone really having to feel any pain, at least not yet. The agreed-upon cuts will escalate exponentially after 2012. Can you follow the choreography here? Is George Bush's buddy Karl Rove still holed up in a back room at the White House?

Paul Krugman of the NYTimes opines: “In case you had any doubts, Thursday's (8/7/11) more than 500 point plunge in the Dow Jones industrial average and the drop in interest rates to near-record lows confirmed it: The economy isn't recovering, and Washington has been worrying about the wrong things. It's not just that the threat of a double-dip recession has become very real. It's now impossible to deny the obvious - that we are not now and have never been on the road to recovery.” While the new budget compromise seems to cut $350 billion from the Pentagon through 2024, the result is actually to increase defense spending slightly above the level the Ministry of War wanted. Michael Hudson, one of our leading economists and a Professor at the University of Missouri has put it into historical perspective: “Parliamentary control over budgets was introduced in 1917 during WWI to prevent ambitious kings or rulers from waging wars, because that was the only reason that governments ran into debt. Almost all governments, for hundreds of years, have been in balance as to their domestic spending. War is what pushes up the debt, as it has done in the United States” em>(Democracy Now August 5, 2011). After all, the Pentagon spends 56 cents of every dollar of tax revenues.

Tea Party types have made tax policy the issue behind the debt ceiling debate: they would not agree to raise the debt ceiling, although Congress had already passed all the spending bills that made the deficit soar to this level, unless the President agreed not to raise taxes and not to plug leaks in the taxing system that benefited the wealthiest. The debt ceiling had been raised 83 times since 1963, but this is the only time when tax policy has been allowed to control the debate. The President threatened that there would not be enough money to mail out Social Security checks. This is a deliberate deception. The Social Security Administration and retired Americans that have their money in the program already own the Treasury bills they bought with payrolls deductions and can write checks whenever they so wish – for the assets are already in the bank. Our President's lie is just another way of to frighten us. Under current payroll deduction rates and with the cap on income that can be taxed set at $106,800, Social Security becomes insolvent in 2036. Should this cap be removed, and higher income Americans pay their true share, then the fund will remain solvent far into the future.

Can We Dig Our Way Out and If So When?
Ralph Nader (Truthout Aug. 5, 2011) feels that President Obama has amazingly surrendered to a minority of the Republican Party. “The Republicans never expected Obama to give in entirely on tax increases for the wealthy, and other tax escapees. He foolishly agreed in Dec. 2010 to tie the debt ceiling to a grand bargain regarding deficits and revenues and thus gave himself little room for later negotiation. Roosevelt was advised in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, that what we needed was spending cuts, but he was wary of the then unorthodox views of Maynard Keynes, and applied a most orthodox mixture of spending cuts and tax increases. By 1938, when conditions were far far worse, Roosevelt finally saw that he had no alternative but to begin pumping money into the economy by any and all means. It is sad to think that history may actually be repeating itself. Today, Obama has almost no weapons with which to stimulate the economy, find new sources of revenues, or force serious cuts in war spending. Maybe he can still invoke the 14th Amendment and ignore the congressional Super-Committee meetings this fall that are intended to cut spending another two trillion, but this President doesn't not appear to be that much of a risk taker. Not this close to his run for another term anyway.