St. Obomba’s holy f’ing *double* hypocrisy
‘Killing for optics’? Obama claims he ‘took no joy’ in drone strikes, but ordered them to avoid looking ‘soft on terrorism’, RT.com, 19 Nov, 2020
“The ex-president’s new book ‘A Promised Land’ sheds some light on the Obama administration’s controversial expansion of the US drone program, which was launched under his predecessor George W. Bush.
One of Obama’s original campaign promises was for US withdrawal from middle-eastern conflicts. However, that promise was not fulfilled during his eight years in office, and the Democrat is now often accused of having further escalated violence in the region through his policies in Libya, Syria, and elsewhere.” […]
And then he blames it on bloody Rahm Emanuel!
“In excerpts from the memoir published by Business Insider, Obama claims that his first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was “obsessed” with the administration’s infamous terrorist “kill list.” Rahm had “spent enough time in Washington to know that his new, liberal president couldn’t afford to look soft on terrorism,” Obama writes.
Despite his willingness to ramp up the drone program, Obama confessed he “took no joy in any of this” and that it did not make him feel “powerful.” However, he adds that the work was “necessary” and that it was his responsibility “to make sure our operations were as effective as possible.”
The Business Insider link with another bullshit virtue-signaling, legacy-shopping outtake:
“In places like Yemen and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, the lives of millions of young men…had been warped and stunted by desperation, ignorance, dreams of religious glory, the violence of their surroundings, or the schemes of older men. They were dangerous, these young men, often deliberately and casually cruel. Still, in the aggregate, at least, I wanted somehow to save them — send them to school, give them a trade, drain them of the hate that had been filling their heads,” Obama wrote.”
The blurb on his book A Promised Land November 17, 2020 by Barack Obama:
‘In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs: A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making—from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy.’
In my Sept. 7, 2015 ‘Bernie Hearts Drone Assassinations, but with One Proviso’, Less Bug Splat) I’d noted:
“Since President Barack Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, at least 2,464 people and 314 innocent civilians [it’s unclear how they’d parsed the two] have been killed in drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. At least seven US citizens have been extra-judicially killed by drones, including one 16-year-old, meaning they were never given a trial as required by the Constitution. Obama himself directly ordered many of the strikes on ‘Terror Tuesdays’.
Another study by the human rights group Reprieve found that as of Nov. 24, 2014, attempts to kill 41 alleged terrorists with drones resulted in the death of as many as 1,147 civilians, including more than 200 children, with thousands more injured.’
Now I know millions have held Bernie in the highest esteem, especially on domestic issues, but for me, US Imperialism (including alliances) has long been my signature issue, later anti-capitalism, not just DSA reform capitalism.
The US Empire is the largest terrorist organization on the planet. Who will stop it? Those who can…and must.
I’d brought a portion of this ABC interview with Martha Raddatz: Bernie Sanders on 2016 Campaign, Foreign Policy Positions
“Yes, Bernie; America ‘should have the strongest military on earth’ if one believes that the Empire needs to grow and thrive, and that the Global War on Terror is an admirable venture. How hideous it is to hear you to trumpet an alliance with the tyrannical Saudi state, though, and pretend that it’s all down to dollars and cents. And oof, how easily you accepted the agitprop framing of formerly embedded with the troops Martha’s questions, my stars! Watching your eyes dart back and forth like a pinball machine showed that you were on the defensive for being called some idiotic peace dove. Unbelievable.”
I’d let Sam Husseini take on Bernie’s ‘Saudi Arabia needs to get its hands dirty and fight ISIS’.
But back to hypocrite Obomba: isn’t it clear the he’ll be one of Joe Biden’s shadow advisors? (Joe’s actual dream wishes for his Senate confirmable cabinet of war criminals aside….)
The Business Insider piece is worth a read, but no: Obomba did not stop torture. He simply out-sourced it on whistle stop tours from black site to black site.
‘Maintain My Options’
“A phalanx of retired generals and admirals stood behind Mr. Obama on the second day of his presidency, providing martial cover as he signed several executive orders to make good on campaign pledges. Brutal interrogation techniques were banned, he declared. And the prison at Guantánamo Bay would be closed.
What the new president did not say was that the orders contained a few subtle loopholes. They reflected a still unfamiliar Barack Obama, a realist who, unlike some of his fervent supporters, was never carried away by his own rhetoric. Instead, he was already putting his lawyerly mind to carving out the maximum amount of maneuvering room to fight terrorism as he saw fit.” […]
“The way this is written, you are going to take us out of the rendition business,” Mr. Rizzo told Gregory B. Craig, Mr. Obama’s White House counsel, referring to the much-criticized practice of grabbing a terrorist suspect abroad and delivering him to another country for interrogation or trial. The problem, Mr. Rizzo explained, was that the C.I.A. sometimes held such suspects for a day or two while awaiting a flight. The order appeared to outlaw that.
Mr. Craig assured him that the new president had no intention of ending rendition — only its abuse, which could lead to American complicity in torture abroad. So a new definition of “detention facility” was inserted, excluding places used to hold people “on a short-term, transitory basis.” Problem solved — and no messy public explanation damped Mr. Obama’s celebration.”
~ New York Times, May 29, 2012
(cross-posted from Café Babylon)
Comments
he's such a romantic,
isn't he?
you can contribute here.
@wendy davis B-A-R-F
NYCVG
succinct.
care to expand? it reads: wendy davis: BARF.
which is fine if you mean to BARF on me, but i'd rather know.
LOL, Wendy
NYCVG
i'd been teasing you,
mainly, for the funny way you'd formatted your comment. good to be sure, though. lol. hope you contributed at my link...
The city they love,
grin.
and please read the how to contribute link; i had. ; )
Destroying parks used by black people who are not millionaires
And destroying habitat of endangered birds. Good work Obomber.
But blaming your subordinate who you then backed for Mayor of Chicago is pretty gutless.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
double hypocrite
just in that Promised Land book. all else? oh, fuck me; too many to count.
Eight wasted years...
Don't we know it. And now we have Obiden to look forward to.
Obama is the ultimate, vapid poseur. Big words, a little history and... gravitas.
The next four years will be yummy.
(Edited)
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Gravediggers paradise n/t
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
plus:
he smiles those big white teeth at us....while he stabs us in the back. 'us' meaning 'not the defense industry and wall street'.
mr wd reminded me that when the Occupy movement got too frisky, he'd [on typo edit]:
shitshut it all down (fusion centers and all) before it could offer a serious challenge to The Power.refresh my memory if you can: who did he name the most trasnsformative president ever, and his defenders had rushed to Spain Things. the rebecca solnit ilk. Reagan?
Remember this barf inducing schlock...
Valerie Jarrett
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
jeezum, crow;
there's a blast from the past. i confess i'd even forgotten her existence.
Thinking of 'Obomba'...
Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies was dubbed 'Re Bomba' (King Bomb) for the killing of his subjects in 1848.
I guess we have had our own King Bomb.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Obama is as phony as a $3 bill
The way he speaks now is much different than how he did before he became that 'charming man with his beautiful family."
From the article:
Listen to his speech patterns starting at 6:40. There is no shuck and awe from his speech.
From the excerpts I’ve read on his book the things that stand out for me is that he’s whining about how we abandoned him during the 2010 midterms and that we were mean to George Effing Bush on his way to Obama’s inauguration. He blames us for his losing the senate after his hideously flawed health care giveaway to insurance execs instead of looking into a f’cking mirror.
What really pisses me off is that he released his book in the middle of a raging epidemic and mass unemployment. This book got him $37.5 billion and he has so much to say that it’s coming in a 2 part book. Good lord the arrogance of him doing now. "Hey everybody look Obama dropped his book! The country has turned to shit, but read the book!
Gah! And gag me!
But hey here’s Kamala to fix our problem with racism because Obama being president for 8 years wasn’t enough for some here. Or something. Kamala didn’t even make it through the primary because Tulsi knocked her off her pedestal and told everyone how bad she was as AG. lol...thanks, Tulsi!
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
what a dauntingly
loaded for bear comment, snoop. can't wait to read the rest of the wisdom of malcolm X. sure he talked black depending on his audience. but: not to wall street: 'i'm the only one standing between you and the pitchforks'.
i will say that he was dubbed king in a nominating speech long ago. musta been clinton's? but what i remember only too well was that in aid of his 'community organizer >>> prez was that he'd been attending jeremiah wright's church...until:
"goddam amerika! GODDAM AMERIKA!
and obomba threw him under the bus.
thanks, and i'll read more anon; time for me close down for the night.
pt. II
i've only had time to read about half of Fikremariam's column, chores calling (thanks for introducing him, by the way), but it's well written, and yes:
Malcolm X noted the difference between the House Negro and the Field Negro, noting the House Negro prefers the royal We when speaking of the Master's bidness.
i loved that he noted who post-Haj Malcolm became, and noted (radicalized) MLK's fear that he'd brought negroes into a burning house. history records a meeting between the two and their handshake.
Fikremariam....
It's a reintroduction because I and others have posted his work here for a few years, but none recently that I can tell. I stopped following him when he went to work in ministery for some country I can't remember. His old work was excellent, but a little gawd-ish. IMO. I am following him again to see how he writes now.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
iirc, the man is Ethopian.
I stopped reading him when he started that work.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Yes it’s Ethiopia
I think....but his writing seemed to change just before I dropped him. Good ideas in his head that he wrote about.
Thanks for the save.
I’m still agape that Obama wrote 2 books and he is charging for both of them. Is hubris the right word or not strong enough to describe his ego? Egotistical, arrogant sellout. This works.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
I really enjoyed his writing at first.
My dream is for him to just not be seen or heard from anymore. Same as for Hillary and Bill. And Trump.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Library Genesis link
http://library.lol/main/A088717E2C3CB5D4622617736B5E77CE
“Those who make Bernie Sanders impossible will make Luigi Mangione inevitable." - Dan Berger
well he was new to me,
but then i have a memory like swiss cheese.
As I've pointed out somewhere on Facebook --
From what I gather of the reviews, Obama tries to portray himself as a Nice Liberal With a Big Ego, but, you know, sober and realistic and all that stuff. There was this New Republic review that was critical and stuff, but I couldn't tell from the book review if there was anything in the book on, say, Obama's crushing of Occupy, or picking his cabinet on the advice of a Citigroup exec, or Syria, Libya, Honduras, Haiti, or the Ukraine, or his party's record-breaking defeats when he was in office and his proxies were busy bankrupting the DNC, or his attempts to pass the Grand Bargain or the Trans-Pacific Partnership. You know, the acts of his that would really rip the cover off of all of this OH SO STRENUOUS LABOR through which Obama strives to avoid admitting what a wannabe Republican he was and is.
Oh and by the way. You can get the book in PDF format for free on Library Genesis.
“Those who make Bernie Sanders impossible will make Luigi Mangione inevitable." - Dan Berger
thanks;
his defense of failing to create a public option (iirc): we had no majority in the senate! pfffft. he had his bully pulpit, which he never used save to fuck over the 95%, most especially big labor, which he'd used to convince them to buy into ObombaDontCare. and were they pissed that they'd been sold a bill of goods.. presidents and big egos: ha ha; yeppers.
(i'd covered the next afl-cio meeting virtually...) ; ) and trumpka is and was an oligarch in his own right. also prez of the international afl-cio. at least the longshoreman pulled out of the corrupt organization in the end.
(obama/trumka strike breakers blockading gmo grains at the port in W state, i've forgotten its name by now)
and as i understand it, obomba care was romney care disguised.
I thought it was --
One thinks of the nice liberal with a big ego who created the "Clash Against the Right" group on Facebook, who sneered at me for wanting a revolution. I wasn't permitted to attack Joe Biden in his group without being hounded by the "moderators." Obama's words are no doubt chosen for the "Obama-Biden Left," descendants, no doubt, of the women who participated in the "Torches of Freedom" marches which equated the right to smoke cigarettes with liberation.
“Those who make Bernie Sanders impossible will make Luigi Mangione inevitable." - Dan Berger
it also suxx bigtime
that he'd 'borrowed' his new book's title from MLK, jr. to say the truth, his speech that had included 'now i may not get to the promised land with you'...made be almost believe in a creator, as he saw so well that he'd be assassinated days (weeks?) later. in fact, i wrote a diary long ago i'd title 'god...in pencil'...riffing off that epiphany as MLK as a prophet.
Oh he has a speech somewhere --
“Those who make Bernie Sanders impossible will make Luigi Mangione inevitable." - Dan Berger
it had occurred to me earlier
that sometimes all that's left is to laugh.
so tonight's closing song is courtesy of erstwhile Café denizen bruce, a marine biologist in florida who sadly...may have crossed to he other side recently.
fancy the number of hours it must have taken this bloke to create this masterpiece!
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZmhBi-1gec]
g' night.
Both 9-year-old kids & physics grad students have WAY more time,
talent, versatility, and creativity than any of us ever seem to have had in my day.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0Tcn0NgFIo]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rjbtsX7twc]
The A Capella Science is great!
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
thank you,
amiga. ; )
Larry Wilmore was on MSNBC
the other day and he mentioned how he made Barack Obama, and the entire audience cringe when he mentioned our drone warfare campaign at the White House Correspondents Dinner a couple years ago.
I wish we still had White House Correspondents Dinners.
"The enemy is anybody who is going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on." Yossarian
Haven't heard from him in years; how's he been?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Tom Tomorrow of “This Modern World” did some of his best work
lampooning Obama as that superhero of pre-compromise, “MiddleMan”; Obama’s favored foreign policy tool as “Droney”; and the typical apologist for Obama and Dem party “pragmatism” as “Chuckles, the Sensible Woodchuck.”
Then, alas, T.T. (Dan Perkins) put himself and his comic strip in the employ of The Other Place and its proprietor — a change I myself celebrated effusively at the time.
Starting in 2016, the “humor” based on TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) and OMB (Orange Man Bad) became so repetitive, predictable, and boring that I stopped reading the strip and haven’t missed it since.
I'm looking forward to the compilation
Unfortunately, my local independent newspaper stopped publishing in those years and I missed most of it.
"The enemy is anybody who is going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on." Yossarian
Some things do improve with time and historical perspective. n/t
the video was on
the original RT.com piece i'd linked to, and yes, larry wilmore is right there. i'll volunteer that he knows how to deliver his material, especially as to timing.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWKG6ZmgAX4&feature=emb_logo]
but directly related: Obama producing anti-Trump Netflix ‘comedy’ series: Hollywood refuses to give up on cash cow obsession, even with Biden in office’, nov. 20, 2020
the bare bones:
Trump nixed them
NYCVG
Yep
Or even in private.
He has access to your e-mails and an Attorney General at his beck and call.
"The enemy is anybody who is going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on." Yossarian
How very...Catholic???
...As long as it doesn't make you happy, anything is permissible.
Anyone familiar with cult-status tabletop role-playing game TORG? Sometimes I feel like we're starting to turn into the alternate reality known as the Cyberpapacy (minus the chrome and demonic sorcery, of course, because We Can't Have Nice Things)...
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
To understand Obama, I suggest looking at his
childhood and who influenced him when he was a child. In general I believe it to be helpful to investigate a person|'s childhood. I admit I didn't read his books, just pieces and little bits of the first one. But I knew that he started to 'tell stories and produced narratives' very early, starting about his father he barely knew and imo did not or never understood (which was of course not his fault).
In my work as a low level video archivist I ran in a couple of short clips how classmates remembered him as a high school student. Nothing spectacular. The narratives he created in his books were not visible to his peers when he was younger.
He was influenced by his grandmother (and more or less raised) and it is worth to look at her 'ideology or world views'. Little is known about his grandfather. Strangely enough he didn't say much about him. Why? He was also a kid tossed back and forth between his mother, her second Indonesian husband (and with it living in Indonesia), his grandparents and completely tossed by his father into nothingness. That leaves a quite urgent need to make up stories (real or imagined) to fill that child confusing nothingness. I don't remember anymore when Obama started to write. Was it when he was in Occidental College or later?
(ADD. I looked it up, he wrote that book years later in 1995 when he already had organized Bill Clinton's campaign in 1992. And quite telling he made a children's version of his book as well... one can never start to manipulate one's readership early enough, right?)
Just saying. People are formed imo in their childhood years. Some make up stories about it for lack of what should have been a childhood within a functioning family. Being confronted with several cultures and way of thinking through his grandmother, mother, mothers second husband, absent father and a shadow grandfather not much was written about, isn't peanuts for any child. There is always a reason for why someone starts to write narratives and I think the child Obama had many needs and reasons to do just that.
This is not a defense of the adult Obama's political actions. I think if you wanted to you can write an essay of the double or triple hypocrisy of most politicians who made it up the ladder of power into the Presidency. And I think it is always helpful to look at any person's childhood experiences.
Just saying...no offense ... and no defense either.
PS I don't read Obama's books, as in general I don't like reading fiction.
https://www.euronews.com/live
yes, we can glean some
insight of an adult from a child's young life, but we all make choices along the way. and it's difficult to know how one's primary care-givers taught them, modeled for them, etc.
on edit: primary caregiver are one thing, but other figures in one's life can be large as well, as in: whose approval was oboma seeking in his rabid qust for power?
i'd linked to his books on amazon in the OP and the earliest they carry is: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream Oct 17, 2006 by Barack Obama
he's clearly a high-functioning sociopath, as have been many presidents, and i had tried to specify that these hypocrisies were only related to his new gaggable book, and of course most people in power are hypocrites.
but what we need to know is what they do, have done, not what their stories were purported to be, imo, and certainly not what they virtue signal, esp. on twitter. the exceptions might be if one were malwired in the womb, or failed to bond with any care-giver, and suffered attachment disorder (essentially conscience-free). but that's a much larger subject.
His first book was "Dreams from my Father".
And I said I did not mean to defend any of Obamas political moves or actions.
Absolutely that goes without saying. I think I made this clear in my first response, as well..
https://www.euronews.com/live
His second book was "Audacity of Hope" written in 2006
I just pulled both books out of my shelves. I think I will read a little bit in the first one.
Audacity of Hope, I won't read. I can't even stand the title.
https://www.euronews.com/live
sorry i got it wrong;
there was quite a long list, and not in sequential order. but he's always been a con man, from the moment his 'transition team' turned wall street neo-con. once a lying power-monger, always a lying power monger.
as bollox ref noted: next up, Obiden Rule. who in his life was he trying to please? we just don't know enough about him to make any serious guesses, imo.
i did start thinking once again that this book in particular is also legacy-shopping for their two daughters who may discover one day that daddy is a war criminal, and should be in prison at the hague.
that should only happen if all the Presidents before and after
him would also have to face judgement for their war activities in the International Court of Justice.
What makes me a bit suspicious is the emphasis on Obama. Why not the Bushes? Or whoever else before?
The only way I can explain that to myself is that most folks are more upset about themselves that they so willingly fell for Obama or that they assumed he to be another better person than the others in the political elite, because he was black and not born into an elite white rich family of power. (me included for a while). Why was that?
Because in most people's mind he was believed to be the better President as he - on the base of his own race - would be more supportive and fairer to the US Afro-American community. It was pretty clear that this was not the case (I remember the words of Harry Belafonte about Obama very early on) and this was a kind of racial thinking too from our side.
Few had understood that Obama was not an Afro-American in the sense that this category is assigned to black people in the US, being born to black American parents.
Anyhow I am tired of Obama talk. And of Michelle talk. My sister has a mug with the quote: You don't have to tell me your opinion, I already have my own. Michelle constantly tells people what they should think. And it would be nice if they wouldn't put their pretty faces on eaoc hf their book covers. Going into a bookstore you can't overlook the Obama books.
Heh, Wendy, I am dreaming now of an American Indian as President. That will put me to sleep nicely.
Good Night.
https://www.euronews.com/live
the emphasis is on
obomba because...this OP is about obomba's new book.
yes, and michelle resurrected dubya bush by smooching him.
the first native american prez; oy. it might be a half n halfie like the infernal con artist ben nighthorse campbell; i'm sure he had aspirations....but at least he had the decency to switch parties.
ok, sorry I haven't read that damn book yet
too tired to ever read it and not enough peanuts to buy it either.
I apologize for the whole thread of conversation we both had here.
So, I think to vote for nobody as President is the last effort I can make.
Thank You for your patience with me. I am outta here now.
https://www.euronews.com/live
I think this covers what Obama and Biden had done
so I think it belongs here.
https://www.euronews.com/live
time for a caption contest?
Dreaming Dreamer dreaming - question is about what /nt
https://www.euronews.com/live
♫ A tiger dreaming of his prey …
Soldier of Fortune by Manhattan Transfer (1983)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRW6qTNe_AM]
'i wrote my book
so that young people could grow up and work hard...to be war criminals such as i.'
Pretty much this
And have you heard? Obama is writing 3 books not just 2 and he’s apparently working on a movie on Netflix about Trump trying to steal the election. At least that’s what I heard on the Twit. That so many people are blind to what he really is just boggles my mind. Open your eyes folks.
I’ve been posting this on Twitter as much as I can and I’m seeing others tweeting it too.
Democrats and the Canard of ‘Too Far Left’
Graph: Barack Obama was brought to power along with a House and Senate controlled by Democrats, meaning that the citizenry wanted for Democrats to lead the country. Mr. Obama appointed many of the same people who had created the crises he inherited to his administration to resolve them. They set about rebuilding the institutions that were to blame, while leaving the people who elected him to fend for themselves. In response, voters fled the Democratic Party to become Independents. Had ‘socialism’ been their concern, they would have joined the Republican Party. But they didn’t. Data Source: gallup.com.
The rest has more graphs that debunk pretty much everything said about the left causing Nancy to lose seats in the house! lol you old bat who has seen the Democratic Party sell themselves like the little whores they are as the country’s jobs have been offshored after NAFTA. THIS was why Biden didn’t do very well in the rust belt. It’s not rocket science to understand that democrats suck.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
one thing i might
be able to answer (if you're speaking of this): ‘Obama producing anti-Trump Netflix ‘comedy’ series: Hollywood refuses to give up on cash cow obsession, even with Biden in office’, nov. 20, 2020
i'd stuck it in upthread, but then it's a long comment thread.
OT
Check out this epic takedown of Max Boot.
The world lost a great man when Cohen passed. Thought y’all'd enjoy this.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt