Another socialist blog

Think Barack Obama is the anti-Bush? Check out how well he agrees with George W on warrentless spying. In response to widespread outrage among his liberal supporters, Obama has issued a statement to explain his support for the FISA reauthorization bill that legalizes warrentless eavesdropping already done by the Bush administration, and gives immunity to telecom companies who colluded with the White House to break the law.

Liberals were doomed to be disappointed, for two reasons:  first, because Obama thinks he can get away with moving to the right, second, because Obama took money from telecom companies.  And disappointed they are:  Obama tarnishes his image as honest and sincere by dancing around the spying issue.  He claims the bill is a “compromise,” as if that made it OK to reduce your right to communicate privately.  But there’s no compromise, it’s a full surrender to the White House, and Obama is a liar.

In the time-honored tradition of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama has been moving rightward ever since he clinched the nomination. Though bloggers and mainstream media like to say he’s moving “toward the center,” that’s not a direction.

• He criticized African-American men who are bad fathers and don’t take personal responsiblity for their families, an obvious attempt to appease whites who are, well, “uncomfortable” with African-Americans.
• Two Muslim women who attended Barack Obama’s event June 16 in Detroit were told they couldn’t stand behind the candidate, according to NPR. One was told her head covering was an issue, and another was told by an Obama volunteer that for political reasons they didn’t want Muslims appearing with him on TV.
• NPR reports Obama supported legalizing Bush’s illegal wiretaps and supported the right of states to execute rapists.

What the Democrats won’t say out loud is that they are going to take liberal voters for granted from now until election day. Obama, like Gore and Kerrey and Clinton and a long parade of other Democratic Party phonies, knows that the two-party system ensures that principled liberal voters now have nowhere else to go. Because there are no left third party candidates pulling the political center of gravity to the left, Obama is free to sprint to the right. Will you still recognize him by election day?

Barack Obama, now the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, lost no time assuring the Israel lobby that it has his unquestioning support. Pandering to the supporters of Israel is nothing new in American politics, of course, but for a guy who claims to be all about change, Obama is looking an awful lot like reheated Bush.

Like George Bush, he continues to beat the drum of the supposed Iranian threat. Like George Bush, he is willing to threaten military action to stop Iran from exercising its sovereignty by building nuclear weapons. (Of course they shouldn’t build nukes, but they don’t have less right to do so than Israel and the U.S., both of which have recently started wars in the Middle East.) Like George Bush, he supports full funding of military assistance to Israel. Like George Bush, he supports enforcement of U.N. resolutions against Israel’s enemies, while ignoring U.N. resolutions against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Like George Bush, Obama believes in one-sided preconditions for negotiations with Hamas, e.g., Hamas must renounce violence while Israel does not. Obama even says Jerusalem must remain the capital of Israel, going beyond even Republican policy.

With Obama in the White House we can forget about a one-state solution in which Palestinians can exercise their right to return to their homes in Israel. And we can forget about U.S. helping to dismantle the Berlin Wall that Israel is building deep inside Palestinian territory. Justice for the victims of Israeli war crimes? Forget about it. An end of the occupation? Oh please, we’ll be paying to maintain it.

Meet the new boss.