Pay Attention To Roger Cohen

I pay close attention to what Roger Cohen writes, assuming it's also what he really thinks. His column in the Times today calls out the Obama team on it's poor use of really good talent and it's over use of the mediocre.

Who knows how bad off we would have been by this time if McCain had won? Really bad off I suspect.

But I can't help but feel growing disillusionment with the Obama administration. There's just too much continuance of all the things Bush supported, especially in the foreign affairs portfolio. Yes, he got health care through, and yes he got financial reform through, and even though they are watered down to please GOPhers they can be improved over time.

On the economy he is up against the the politically motivated obstructionist GOPhers on every front, from unemployment insurance extension to the spending needed to avoid backsliding into more recession like what happened in the late 1930's. That's when Congress lost its nerve and cut off stimulus too soon.

Railing about the deficit is the bullshit the GOPhers are using to convince the gullible voters that the Dems should be thrown out this year as they, the GOPhers, were two years ago. It's the height of hypocrisy to claim that continuing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy doesn't increase the deficit. That's a ridiculous and absurd bald-faced lie.

But it's the wars for me. The loss of precious lives and billions of dollars is an obscenely high cost to pay for pretending that America's security and foreign interests are sufficiently in danger to justify unending war, somewhere, all the time.

Paul Krugman, today, calls tax cuts for the wealthy Voodoo economics. That term should also be applied to waging unnecessary war. It's Voodoo foreign policy. Both black magic policies are designed to line the pockets of the very wealthy even more, especially the pockets of those who accumulate vast wealth through their investment in arms and all manner of war materiel.

Obama is confirming the GOPhers' appraisal of him as weak, and unable to stand up to their selfish greed.

He says he'd rather be a good one term president than a poor two term one. But he's acting like he, like most politicians, is more worried about keeping his job than governing based on his principles and values. I hope that's not giving the devil more than he's due.

I guess whether one is disillusioned with Obama or not depends on the major reason(s) one voted for him. For me the disappointment is about his appearing to have been rolled by the Pentagon, and his ignoring the threat of the Neocon/Pentagon/Military/Industrial Complex Ike warned us about in the late 1950's. And Ike, as Supreme Commander in WW II and then as Commander in Chief, clearly would have known and understood that threat.

Leanderthal