Barack Obama is not your favorite uncle.

He’s not your BFF. He’s not a rock star. He’s not the short, but scrappy white guy who comes off the bench for your college basketball team to the delight of the student section.

He’s an elected official. He’s a civil servant. He works for you. It is both your right and your responsibility to scrutinize and question every single policy decision he makes. It is both your right and your responsibility to parse every public statement he gives. Our population’s failure to do these things is what gave BushCo the freedom to lie, cheat and steal this country into both the financial and moral bankruptcy. Failure to do so under the current administration will only make it worse. What we need from you is not knee-jerk defense of Barack Obama. What we need from you, fellow citizen, is vigilance.

A quick recap of what’s at stake:

• The financial sector is a shambles of foreclosed homes, insolvent banks and hundreds of thousands of recently unemployed men and women. Once again, the big guy has bent the little guy over and sodomized him with rolled up hundred dollar bills. Once again, he’s going to get away with it.
• Speaking of financial matters, half of all bankruptcies in this country are caused by medical bills. The wealthiest nation in history has a health care system which The World Health Organization ranked lower than Costa Rica, Morocco, Colombia and 33 other countries when it last produced it’s rankings in 2000. Silly socialists.
• Our love affair with rockets and tanks has left us with a bloated defense budget that is almost as large as the military expenditures of all the other countries in the world combined. We’ve been in Iraq longer than we were in WW II. During that time, we’ve murdered and/or caused the deaths of as many as a million people, displaced hundreds of thousands more, made cannon fodder of 4,000 Americans, created countless terrorists and spent as many as $3 trillion, according to some estimates. But if we leave too soon, you know…things might really fall apart.
• Despite our legal, moral and tactical failing in Iraq, we’re poised to redouble our efforts in that other illegal, immoral war of aggression in Afghanistan with a troop surge for that specific campaign and an increase in military spending in general. If at first you don’t succeed…
• Some Americans still hold on to the arrogant, ignorant notion that our homosexual brothers and sisters do not have the exact same rights as everyone else. (Do you think Barack and Michelle would have settled for a civil union?) While the nation’s gaze was focused on the passage of Proposition 8 in California—a heinous and hateful piece of legislation, to be sure—Arkansas, Florida and Arizona passed laws making it illegal for homosexual couples to adopt. Much better that thousands of children continue to be shuffled to and from various foster homes and orphanages, lest they end of living with a couple of dikes, huh?
• Oh yeah. Cops are still murdering Black men in the street.

Excuse the fuck out of me if I take a second from admiring how Black and cool my president is to spend time worrying about the actual issues.

“But, Nick. Obama just got into the White House! He didn’t cause all that other stuff!”

As a United States Senator, Obama was complicit in and/or did absolutely nothing to resolve most of the aforementioned issues. (The fact that he was not in the Senate for the Iraq war vote and has said repeatedly that he would not have voted for it is balanced out by the fact that he voted to give President Bush every single dollar he wanted to fight the war.) He may not have been the guy holding Jodie Foster down on the pool table, but he was definitely cheering by the bar.

If I have to hear, read or see one more pundit falling back on some version of that toothless “he just got elected” canard, I’m going to challenge Stephon Marbury to a head-butting competition.

The next friend or family member who allows that idiotic, “He just said that to get elected”, The Spook Who Sat by the Door theory to escape their lips should be given the Ludovico technique from A Clockwork Orange with the violent images replaced with Noam Chomsky speeches.

Yes, the Obamas seem to be a well-adjusted, loving, beautiful family. Who gives a fuck? We have more important things to talk about than what sort of dog Malia and Sasha will get or whether or not Barack is smoking again.

The campaign is over. “Yes we can” should be removed from your vocabulary and deposited in the dust bin of political propaganda forever. Take that limited edition Shepard Fairy print down off your fucking wall, roll it up really tight, and shove it up your ass. You don’t make idols out of employees. The time has come for Americans to stop being cheerleaders and start being play by play analysts. (Think Hubie Brown, not Dick Vitale.)

What America needs is more informed, passionate debate on the merits of the issues. What America does not need is more mealy-mouthed defenses of Barack Obama.

]]> http://www.nickadamsweb.com/2009/02/11/a-memo-to-america/feed/ 4 http://www.nickadamsweb.com/2008/10/30/david-simon-on-the-colbert-report/ http://www.nickadamsweb.com/2008/10/30/david-simon-on-the-colbert-report/#comments Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:47:18 +0000 nick.adams http://www.nickadamsweb.com/?p=634 Two of my favorite people making with the funny. Good stuff.

North Carolinaaaaa! Come on and raise up! (c) Petey Pablo

But what’s disturbing about Obama’s Iraq plan, as well as Hillary Clinton’s, is that both of them have plans that would keep 40,000 to 80,000 troops in Iraq. 

Image via Flickr user ::Wendy::

They can’t, can they?  From The New York Times:

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Turkey must limit its military operations against Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq to days or a couple of weeks rather than months, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday.

Gates, who is due to meet Turkish officials in Ankara on Thursday, said Turkey should not rely on military action alone in dealing with guerrillas in the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), but also find ways to improve economic and social conditions.

"It’s very important that the Turks make this operation as short as possible and then leave, and to be mindful of Iraqi sovereignty," Gates told reporters in New Delhi on Wednesday before leaving for Ankara.

Ironically, reading shit like this makes me want a nice glass of Pinot Noir. 

(Image via Flickr user kameelahwrites)

Always a beacon of sanity in the increasingly chaotic, idiotic media world, Haper’s Magazine makes one of the best suggestions I’ve heard in a long time.  Specifically, Garret Keizer says:

If someone were to suggest, for example, that we begin a general strike on Election Day, November 6, 2007, for the sole purpose of removing this regime from power, how readily and with what well-practiced assurance would you find yourself producing the words “It won’t do any good”? Plausible and even courageous in the mouth of a patient who knows he’s going to die, the sentiment fits equally well in the heart of a citizen-ry that believes it is already dead.

The easy–and expected–thing to do is to immediately dismiss the idea as an idealistic, unattainable notion, but consider this.  The vast majority of our populace believes that we should begin withdrawing our troops from Iraq, yet our elected officials–both Democrats and Republicans– whom we chose to represent our voices have done absolutely nothing to stop this war.  A war which, of course, was illegal to begin with.  These guys work for us.  And they’re not doing what we want them to do.  So…they should be fired.  And we have the power to make it happen.  Are we willing to exercise that power?

Keith Olbermann updates his excellent time line showing how this administration continues to use scare tactics to keep the populace in line.

Via YouTuber heathr234

Whenever I think about the lies and machinations of this group of hateful, greedy, war mongering jackals, I can’t help but be reminded of this guy.

• Over 2,200 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since Mos Def stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declared that major combat operations had ended.
• Three 6 Mafia has been pressured by their conservative Christian base to give less and less money to groups that distribute condoms in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Jay-Z disenfranchised thousands of black voters in Florida in 2000, and again in Ohio in 2004.
• MF Doom wears a mask because he’s the one kidnapping all these little white girls.
• Talib Kweli failed to take action to protect the citizens of New Orleans even though he had been warned “of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property.”
• Kanye West arrested 800,000 people in 2005 on charges related to marijuana, a substance proven to be significantly less harmful to society than both alcohol and tobacco.
• During the first three years of the Diddy administration, the unemployment rate increased by one-third, 2.2 million jobs were lost, and the country went from a $281 billion surplus to a $521 billion deficit.
• Just Say No was Biz Markie’s idea.
• Little Brother brought about mad cow disease and a previously unseen strain of E. coli by feeding corn and the remains of other animals to cows.
• Bow Wow is the reason the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world.
• Thanks to Lil’ Wayne, the United States has 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population.
• Speech from Arrested Development canceled Arrested Development.

This folks on the Australian show, The Chaser, hit the streets Jaywalking style to find out what Americans think about the war in Iraq.