S& sent birthday greetings to Barack Obama

Barack Obama celebrated his half century with great festivity. He, however, got presents he didn’t want; the ratings agency S&P downed graded the US debt from AAA or risk proof to AA+. [Will Moody’s and Fitch follow suit?]
AA+ expresses S&P’s opinion that the borrower, in this case the US, will meet its debt obligations. For this ratings agency, which played fast and furious with mortgages triggering the 2008 global recession, believes the recently agreed on deal in the houses of Congress on debt reduction and raising the debt ceiling is too timid.
To put it mildly Obama is livid, claiming the ‘downgrade’ is based on a faulty computer model. Yet S&P’s position questions the Faustian bargain signed into law by the American president that takes the budgetary knife to the ‘fat’ in budget without raising revenues.
In spite of a slight drop in US employment from 9,2 to 9,1 percent, the economic prospects for less than a snail’s pace recovery is shaky. Where are the jobs? Obama & co. saw in consumer spending a way out of the recession. A less than intelligent strategy, for the plain and simple truth that the average US ratepayer is deep in debt, and by encouraging him to take on more debt makes no sense.
Obama and the Republicans sloughed off the task of creating jobs. It was too difficult but the real un and underemployment stats are edging around 20 percent if not higher.
The Republicans are for protecting the plutocrats and mount the barricades when it comes to closing tax holes on the corporations and raising taxes on the rich and the very rich.
The corporations and banks are sitting on a Fort Knox of cash but won’t lend. They are not hiring only downsizing or sending jobs abroad [and here’s a new wrinkle in the face of greed: the use of prison labour that can be had for as little as us$0,20 an hour!].
Looking at Obama rallying Americans makes GuamDiary if he has lost his ‘mojo’ to move crowds. Pale, if not stunned, he recited his usual platitude of ‘we won’t take this lying down’ and ‘we’re telling the world, we’re going to come through the crisis’ on top, as though he was simply talking for talking sake, not truly believing in his own message.
Poll after poll has shown how out of step Congress and the White House are out of step with the mood of Americans who want to go back to work. Jobs is now on the Obama’s lips, but, pray tell, how is he going to perform miracles in putting the country back to work when he has embraced the Republicans’ mantra of cutting back up and down the budget line?
Obama has his own self to blame for his ‘community’ style of bargaining that gives the store away. At this point, since he swept the sins of the Bush administration under the carpet, he has ended up ‘owning’ the blame for a bad economy, the growing impoverishment of the country, the strengthening of a 1984 state of secrecy and spying, and the like.
The 45 president of the US cannot count on a shoo in return to office in 2012, if the elections were held today. Is Obama capable to showing true grit, taming the Republicans, and getting the US back on the right track?

FAA left up in the air

The US Congress, after a bruising battle on America's debt, has fled 'tropical' Washington, D.C. for a five week summer holiday. But the feisty solons left with an item of business undone: no authorisation for the Federal Aviation Administration to continue doing its job. Translation: project upgrades left hanging in mid air; 4000 workers furloughed and there 'technically' unemployed; federal taxes on the sale of air tickets remain uncollected to the projected sum of a us$1 billion or more.
The Republicans are holding the Agency's authorization hostage. It seems odd that they who preach fiscal responsibility are the same and very people who are, when all is said and done, 'spendthrifts' and practitioners of the 'pennywise, pound foolish' way of governing.
What is at stake in the Republicans 'benign' neglect is the right of FAA to organise. Like rabid animals, they fear unions and the right of the hard worker to earn a decent living. In this, the right wing Republicans are taking a page out of their sainted patron, Ronald Reagan. For those of short memory, during his first run for the American presidency, he got the support of the Air Controllers Union, which he welcomed. And then, elected president, one of his first acts was to crush the union without a bye your leave! And, in a way, since then workers in the FAA have fared weakly from lack of a union.
For the Republicans who are marching lock stepped to an extreme right wing radical beat favouring the rich and quashing any resistance for the rights of the average working stiff and the poor, the sign on the door is 'keep out!' Now, we have the root and branch of the reason why the fiscally conservative right wing Republicans, with a dash of blue dog Democrats in tow, are letting the FAA up in the air until they have feasted and rested and gloated in winning all along the line in the debt standoff with a feckless president.
Ultimately, the working classes of the US' right to a decent and fair living will be held hostage until the Republicans get their way possibly.
Obama has denounced Congress' insouciance, calling it a lose lose situation, and strongly urging members of Congress to do their duty by passing the FAA's reauthorisation bill. Will he be heard? After his shameful caving in to the Republicans, he has lost any moral authority. And if the polls mean anything today, in spite of raising oodles of money for his re election, he would be defeated today. Not only is the Congress held in contempt by the US people, but Obama has emerged from the contentious debt battle with Congress seriously wounded. Until the end of his term, if his past behaviour is an gauge, he will limp along since he has no taste for battle for his ideas and his 'concerns' for the American people.

Obama: Debt reduction fight could've been different

In lawyerly tones, the American president opined that the protracted fight to raise the US debt ceiling could've been different.
Of course, it could've, if Obama had backbone.
According to polls, he is thought of by the American people as a 'follower, not a leader'. And there you have it in a nutshell. Obama's as though now he is an albatross round the neck of the Democrats.
As for his assessment that the law he signed on raising the debt is a 'balanced' [sic] measure, he need only looking at the world stock exchanges' reaction. Everyone is bailing out of the equity market. What does that mean? Lower corporate earning, slower than a snail's pace economic growth, impoverishment of the majority of Americans who unlike the top one percent who own 40 percent of the country's wealth, and the spiraling downwards trajectory as the US as a world power.
Obama is the Republicans cat's paw, in sum. Without taxing the rich and closing loopholes favouring the corporate elite pulling the strings of Congress through lobbies, the Obama has put the stamp of paralysis on the way America governs. Dysfunctional is the key word of how best to describe the current state of affairs of the way Washington works.
Will the iron grip of the warfare state show signs of cracking? No doubt about it. How can you justify an arms manufacturer like General Electric, whose CEO Jeffrey Immelt Obama appointed head of his Jobs Council, not paying a blessed cent in taxes? How can you allow the beleaguered Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. not only to escape paying taxes but getting reimbursed in right off totaling millions?
Already in the canyons of Wall Street, who are the people that brought us the global recession of 2008, thousands of protesters filled the streets calling for taxing the banks and the rich. Thanks to 'al Jazeera' television which is now running 23 hours on a New York cable system, a 25 minute episode documents popular protest and the obscene and decadent greed and life style of the one percent who run everything through hired hands in the halls of Congress, the White House, and yes, the Supreme Court. You won't find accounts of protest in the 'Washington Post' who pushed for the 'debt plan' and praised Republican intransigeance or the old grey mare the 'New York Times', which is the voice of the rich and powerful. And the US media as a whole is in bed with the elite.
Charlie Rose is a good barometre of political life in the US. The other night it featured 30 minutes with the much damaged Robert Rubin, probing for this man's advice. It is no happenstance that this banker of ill repute hid behind the situation is too complex and even the best minds are at odds in proffering solutions to the sick man of the world who is the US. Or Alan Greenspan who during his long tenure at the Federal Reserve prepared the way for the 2008 economic debacle. And who even today remains unreconstructed and unrepentant in his belief in the markets as the regulator of all things!
Unable to learn Obama reflects the stupidity and the idiocy of America's ruling class of which he is the willing servant. Yes, things could've been different if Obama wasn't the spokesman of the one percent. He's down his worst and for all his service, he's a one term wonder and the country and the world is left in the lurch.

Beating the war drums on North Korea

Japan's intelligence services are warning that North Korea is 'seeking a new long distance rocket capable of reaching the American territory of Guam'.
This 'rumour' is not knew. North Korea itself has long boasted in its verbal duel with the US that its long distance rockets have the capacity to hit Los Angeles! Call it braggadocio! The DPRK leaders are not fools: burnt into memory is the utter devastation and waste that the US aeroplanes visited on North Korea during the peace treaty less Korean War of 61 years ago.
Japan is part of the tripartite axis along with the US and South Korea in trying to 'roll back' North Korea to the point of collapse or surrender to the trio's demands.
Recent US DPRK talks in New York went nowhere but did one thing: it had North Korea and the US talking to each other. Let out in the reporting of the two day confab was that North Korea was willing to abide by a 2005 pledge to deactivate its nuclear programme in return for much needed food. The US did not seriously consider the offer; it felt 'once burnt, twice shy'. But was it really burnt as it coordinated a no prisoners taken position with a vindictive Lee Myung bak government in Seoul?
As GuamDiary has often commented, the US wants to bring down Kim Jong il by any means necessary; it cut off food donations through NGOs in 2008 in step with South Korea's abandonment of the 'Sunshine Policy', stopping deliveries of fertilisers and food, and halting any commercial activities between North and South.
The time for talking is past or maybe put off for another day, the war drums are thumping away furiously warning us that the dreaded North Koreans are once more engaging in activities that will put us in danger of another war.
Lee in South Korea has visions of reuniting a divided Korean peninsula, and he is even willing to tax South Koreans more to hasten that day which he puts as 2017. The US is in no measure to fight another war, the more especially since it won't have enough money to keep the country's books balanced for healthy growth.
So the rejectionist trio turn to renewed propaganda wars, which will keep everyone on a state of high alert, but will pass up any practical opportunity to deal with North Korea in a commonsensical way diplomatically.

Obama's put a 'gone fishing' sign on the White House

'Gone fishing' that's what the golden throat Barack Obama has gone after the 'debt crisis'. He dashed any lingering 'audacity for hope' as his term in the White House is running down to 2012. Only plain lack of judgment and a tendency to take 'French leave' in the heat of battle with the Republicans.
With what he calls a 'balanced approach' to lifting the debt ceiling, he has doomed the ordinary taxpayer to bear the weights and chains and dues of the plutocrats, the coupon clippers, and the wealthy. He has, in effect, put the ordinary American citizen on a bread and water diet; he has hastened the physical decline of America's health of its citizenry as well as the government's ability to function rationally.
On the vote of the bill to raise the ceiling in the lower house of Congress half of Obama's Democrats voted against their leader's poor vision; that split spells paralysis for Obama, and it wouldn't surprise GuamDiary that in the 2012 convention someone will rise up to challenge him as the party's standard bearer in 2012.
Obama will go down in American history as one of the worst presidents the nation ever elevated to the White House.
The chattering classes almost spoke in a single voice saying that he had endless opportunities to 'throttle' or challenge the Republicans, but each time, he caved. The president's inability to rule is mirrored in his advisors who may, in may instances, be considered 'the best and the brightest', but are out of touch with the country and share a Whig vision of class rule that is a reflexion of the Republicans. In other words, it's a school tie world.
Frank Rich's inaugural article in the 11 July 2011 issue of 'New York Magazine' is a searing indictment on the Obama vision and first 3 years in the White House. [We recommend reading Rich's article.]
'Gone fishing', too, is Obama's base. More likely than not, the president may raise oodles of money for his reelection thanks to the bill on not raising taxes for rich and shifting the burden to backs of the diminishing middle classes and the hard working poor and the down and out, but he won't get the support of his base in the way he did in 2008.
If the Republicans have Mitt Romney as its leader, Obama is a goner. And then the heavy burden the reactionary Republicans have visited on the American people will have to be undone, for the plain and simple truth that they cannot govern with the lack of money to run the country and feed the military industrialists and sustain a warfare state whilst at the same time impoverishing the vast majority of Americans.
Speaking of reactionary Republicans, we're talking of the Tea Party Republicans who have come to Washington to turn the tide on big government spending. And lo and behold, they're becoming as venal as any other politician by bringing home the pork to their districts. Without government funds for their home base, they would be voted out of office. How reassuring that something old is new again!

Obama gives away company store which will make him a one term president

US president Barack Obama went on America television late Sunday [31 July 2011], announcing a deal on the budget and debt, thereby sparing the 'world's only superpower [sic]' of a default. Calling it a 'balanced' response to avert a crisis, Obama put his fellow Democrats in a position whereby they are going to undo the work of FDR and LBJ. In sum, he has given the right wing Republicans what they wanted whilst crying 'victory' for his presidency.
Eyewash! Obama has sold out his base and condemned the vanishing 'middle classes' and the working poor and the down and out to years of servitude by paying for the debauched corporate elite that pulls the strings.
From the get go, the Republicans read Obama right. They saw in him a callow, vain president with precious little experience who was chasing a place in the history book as being above the fray, a unifier, a peace maker, or goodness gracious us a 'saint'.
In truth, this sitting US president turned out to be weak, who, in his self satisfied sense of self, would give away the store to crow he brought 'all the brothers and sisters' together and reached a reasoned, balanced consensus. That reasonableness existed only in his mind.
Day one of his administration, he has miss read the mood of the economy, the health of the nation, and the suffering of the American people. Instead of punishing the bankers for causing the global 2008 recession, he gratified them with privileges and more money; instead of creating public works to put an almost 10 percent of unemployed American back to work, he settled for paying them for two years for doing nothing whilst companies sent jobs abroad and retrenched at home by not hiring; instead of broadening a health policy by extending Medicare to all Americans as the Canada did for its own citizens, he threw them to the wolves of private assurers; instead of winding out two failed wars, he fell for the arguments of the military to enlarge engagement in Afghanistan; instead of defending the rights of his citizens, he extended wiretapping and trampling on their fundamental rights; and so on and on.
In dealing with the Republicans, he has proven himself too clever by half by going further right than them, but not as extreme as the mad members of the Tea Party.
In sum, he has done everything wrong in the broadest sense of the word. And for that, he probably will lose re election in 2012 in spite of his ability to raise a cool US$1 billion in funds.
He has done everything to ensure that the plutocrats will seize all levels of US government next year and hasten the downwards spiral of a nation that has lost its way with more than a little help from a man called Obama.

US DPRK go nowhere

‘Constructive and businesslike’ says a US department of state communiqué after two days of ‘exploratory talks’ with North Korea. The meaning is clear from the bland, bureaucratic formula:
Behind this assessment is that the US has not found the DPRK ‘sincere’ in discussing the North’s nuclear and rocket programmes as a precondition to restarting the orphaned six party talks in Beijing.
America’s position is a series of policy papers reflecting not only a refusal to engage in the give and take of diplomacy but also to turn the screws on North Korea to fold and say ‘oh Lord, I am sinner and now repent!’
The Obama administration’s ‘dig in the heels’ macho stance is a mirror image of South Korea’s Lee Myung bak’s regime. The common, shared attitude of these two allies reminds us of two bullies bragging and blustering in a playground sandbox to scare a smaller and supposedly weaker kid, to give up his money and his marbles.
Well, they picked on the wrong ‘victim’. Neither the US nor South Korea have like the Bourbons of old, ‘learnt nothing and forgot everything’ after more than 60 years dealing with the North in one way or another.
The North Koreans baulk at the US demand give up the DPRK’s nuclear programme, after which the US and South Korea will ‘reward’ North Korea with visions of sugar plums and fairies and a land of wonders and delight’.
Kim Jong il’s representatives are not impressed, let alone amused by loudly expressed arrogant empty promises. They, too, are not wet behind the ears in dealing with the US and South Korea. They well know with whom they are dealing and wise to their wiles and naivety in diplomacy.
Kim Jong il has for a long while called for negotiations with the US with no preconditions, but in spite of letters of his transmitted to the White House by two former American presidents and Obama’s own state department senior staff, the American position remains little modified.
As GaumDiary pointed out, the US team talking to Kim Gye gwan and his team, is made up of people who signed on to a Council on Foreign Relations’ report on Korea explicating recommending to the Obama White House to ‘roll back North Korea’.
‘Roll back’ is a throw back phrase to the Cold War: its meaning is clear: defeat Communist regimes. And that is, and has been, America’s position that has no failed, even though the world’s ‘only super power’ pushed through ‘sanctions, boycotts, withheld food from NGOs working in Korea’, among other ploys. And this objective is fully shared by Lee Myung bak whose term in office ends in 2012 and without the opportunity to run again for the Blue House.
And there we are at a ‘status quo ante’. Once again the US has failed to show leadership on the matter of a divided Korea. North Korea is not surprised how predictable Obama and Lee are, how small and poorly organized the joint US ROK offensive is; nevertheless that wont stop the DPRK from trying to dissipate the distrust to reach a way to resolve the long standing issues in the divided Korean peninsula..