Chains we can believe in‏

Campaigning for president, Barack Obama promised to post online, for at least five days, all pending legislation so that the public could review it. Now, he’s president, so, sorry chumps, it was only campaign rhetoric. Duh, assholes.

Campaigning for president, Barack Obama promised to shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Now, he’s president, so, sorry chumps, it was only campaign rhetoric. Duh, assholes, I’ll detain anybody I want for as long as I want.

Campaigning for president, Barack Obama promised to end the war in Iraq. Now, he’s president, so, sorry chumps, it was only campaign rhetoric. Duh. Six months into the Obama administration, the Democratic majority in Congress approves another $106 billion for the war. That's bad enough. But then Obama says he will use "signing statements" to ignore parts of the bill--after attacking Prez. W. Bush for doing the same thing!! Oh, and the sections that Obama wants to exclude are provisions regulating U.S. aid given to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Can't cross his banker buddies, now can he?

It goes on and on:

Taking Bush's position, administration denies msnbc.com request for logs
The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn't have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.

Despite President Barack Obama's pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com's request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present.

Meet the new boss. Same as the olde boss.

Fearful Symmetry

The political Left and Right perfectly balance each other in a coordinated pincer movement, the objective of which is to skewer the middle class (well under way) and ultimately institute a global slave economy—packaged as protection and care.

At the behest of the financial controllers, the left and right departments of the political system expand government’s coercive power from behind blustery rhetoric about the evils of intrusive government (intrudes too far into markets says the Right, too far into personal privacy says the Left).

Global warming and terrorism illustrate this Left-Right symmetry.

Here’s a passage from George Will’s 6/22/09 Newsweek column:

“Nowadays, green reasoning is the first refuge of scoundrels. Global warming has become like God: It is an explanation for everything and an all-purpose excuse for the political class to do whatever it wants to do—what it has a metabolic urge to do—and that is boss people around. It can maximize its opportunities for doing that if it maximizes the number of people dependent on government, and the number of ways in which they are dependent.”

The ostensibly observant Will fails to note that homeland security reasoning is another first refuge of scoundrels and that terrorism also has become like God, explaining everything and giving the political class an excuse to boss people around (have you tried boarding a plane lately?)

Whether climate change is imminent and if so whether human industry plays a role, I don’t have the scientific understanding to say. Whether terrorists are at our doorstep, however, seems doubtful. The U.S.-Mexican border has remained wide open since 9/11, with uncounted thousands of visitors crossing into the U.S., backpacks full of God knows what, undocumented and untraceable. And yet, the border states have not suffered terrorist bombings, suicidal or otherwise. The door is open, the bad guys are not walking through. The threat is overblown.

But the terrorist threat functions for the political Right exactly as the climatological threat functions for the political Left. Both are pretexts for monitoring and controlling you and me.