The news just gets better and better. So now we are being told that the big O is going to (or perhaps has by the time I've posted this) announce that off shore drilling rights will be auctioned off for "some" areas off our coasts. Drill Baby Drill.
I fully expect that most of the major progressive conservation organizations will find it reasonable to be rather muted in their criticism of Obama because. I suspect that as Hampsher says they are part of the veal pen and they need that money from institutional donors that Obama will be able to cut off or severely limit if they don't toe the proper line. Of course, there will be an understanding that they will have to do a sort of kind of opposition, which will not prevent them from supporting Obama in 2012 and other democrats in 2010.
I have a harder time understanding the unions, although with the recess appointments Obama finally announced I can see that the unions got a little bit of what they wanted (the two union members on the NLRB). Although it is a pathetically small gift to get for selling out their membership with the eventual taxation of their own members benefits and the bail out on some sort of either public option single payer or Medicare for all. Let's not forget the union's position in democratic primary for the Senate race in Pennsylvania where they are now supporting the guy who managed to destroy their hopes of card check for the rest of my life at least.
So what is the point of the unions at this time in our history? I wish I knew. I would think that they would not be as easy to buffalo as the interest groups that depend on individual large contributors. Yet they seem to go into the same kind of acceptance mode as the other groups. I've seen it called a battered wife syndrome, and perhaps that explains it as well as anything else. Although, the other explanation,that is that of simple corruption and a need for personal access so they can look important is also seems to explain a lot. I find it important to remind myself that it is not necessary to find a single answer, sometimes there are multiple answers to one question, multiple reasons for a single action.
Of course, when we look at Greenwald's piece today about the financial motivations of the journalists (no I controlled myself and did not put scare quotes around the word journalists) who cover the White House. Five million for a book deal telling the inside dope about the infighting inside the OWH. As Greenwald points out this is not journalism and has nothing to do with politics, unless one defines both as what the courtiers wrote about Versailles or perhaps one should think Casanova's Memoirs without the interesting bits. There is obviously the single answer of complete and total corruption.
The blogs like Balloon-Juice and No More Mister Nice Blog which apparently have no financial interest seem to point to the battered wife syndrome combined with a need to just believe in The Leader (think Orwell). They put so much emotion into Obama that they do not have, yet the ability to recognize him for what he is (not what he has become, he always was). I had a very hard dealing with my own personal disenchantment and coming to the realization that I had been (willingly) mislead by Obama and I really wasn't looked to for advice by much of anyone. Add to this is the realization that the republicans are bat shit crazy and we are left with what in the end?
I firmly believe that things will have to get much worse before they get better, but I also have no conviction that things will get better even if they do get much worse. I think that a lot of people think that by backing the democrats and Obama there are really helping these people make small little steps toward a better society and country. I rather suspect that what the democrats and Obama are doing is making it much harder for things to be changed for the better. That we are watching the oligarchs fooling the masses and cementing their control.
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