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Could you ask for a more perfect bookend to Obamas blood-soaked neocon abortion of a presidency than his receiving $400,000 to give a speech at a health care conference organized by a Wall Street firm?

My God I hate every single thing about every single part of this. Let me type that out again in segments, so we can all really feel into it: Four hundred thousand dollars. For a former President of the United States. To give a speech. At a healthcare conference. Organized by a Wall Street firm.

Why are Wall Street firms organizing motherfucking healthcare conferences, one might understandably ask? And why are they hiring the man who just completed an eight-year war on progressive healthcare policy and a torrid love affair with Wall Street criminals? These are extremely reasonable questions that might be asked by anyone who is intelligent and emotionally masochistic enough to look straight at this thing, and the answer, of course, is America. Thats what America is now. The man who continued and expanded all of Bushs most evil policies, created a failed state in Libya, exponentially expanded the civilian-slaughtering US drone program which Chomsky calls the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times to unprecedented levels, facilitated the Orwellian expansion of the US surveillance state while prosecuting more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined, and used charm and public sympathy to evade the drastic environmental policy changes well need to avert climate disaster and lull the progressive movement into a dead sleep for eight years now gets paid nearly half a million dollars an hour to continue bolstering the exploitative corporatist nightmare hes dedicated his life to. American University has compiled data indicating that the already extremely wealthy Obama family may end up being worth as much as $242 million in their post-White House years, and if Barry keeps whoring himself out like this, he might exceed even that.

Anyone whos familiar with my work knows that I harbor markedly less affection for Hillary Clinton than I do for malaria-infected mosquitoes, but I still find it annoying how clued-in people on the anti-establishment left are to how horrible she is while still maintaining a degree of sympathy for Obama. Theres a general awareness that Obama was far from perfect and did immoral things, but you rarely see the same vitriol and disdain for him as you do for Clinton on the left, which is absurd because they are the same monster. This needs to change before there can be any forward movement on the progressive front. Unless we get crystal clear that these Democratic neocons are unacceptable, theyre going to keep finding political influence among our ranks.

I began this essay by saying that Obamas $400,000 oligarchic shill job was a bookend. I did that because, in what was easily the single most important and egregious WikiLeaks email of 2016, we learned that Wall Street was calling the shots in the Obama administration before the Obama administration even existed. Before he was even elected, an executive from Citigroup (the corporate owner of Citibank) gave Obama a list of acceptable choices for who may serve on his cabinet. The list ended up matching Obamas actual cabinet picks once elected almost to a t.

Feel like doing a little citizen journalism? Here is a link to the aforementioned WikiLeaks document. Go to Attachments and select Cabinet Example to see the cabinet members offered to Obama, and compare the names there to this Wikipedia list of actual cabinet appointments and note the tremendous amount of overlap for his 2009 appointments.

Feel like doing a little more citizen journalism? Try and find any mainstream coverage of this email after it came out. Write about your findings somewhere on the internet, and boom, a guerrilla investigative journalist is born.

The email was ignored by everyone but the fringe of the fringe, with the most significant coverage coming fromRussia Todayand right here in theObserver, whose ties to Trump via then-publisher Jared Kushner have been well-documented. The anti-establishment right didnt care about it because they were focused on beating Clinton, and the anti-establishment left didnt care because why? It should of course have been a front-page scandal for weeks, but at the very least progressives should have lifted up a big fat NO to it. This was the cabinet that determined the administrations response to the criminals who caused the 2008 financial crisis that had just ravaged the nation, and they were treated with a light finger wag and a kiss goodnight by these Citibank appointees, who then went on to help assemble the exploitative and climate-killing TPP.

I can understand why pro-establishment liberals are defending this man; he stands for everything they stand for. If all you stand for is vapid tribalism and vanity politics and you are willing to sacrifice integrity along with economic and social justice and the lives of other peoples kids in corporatist wars overseas in order to feel like youre on the right team, Obama is your man. But if youre an actual, real progressive and not just a latte-sipping NPR listener with a sense of self-righteousness and a pro-choice bumper sticker, youve got no business regarding Obama with anything but disgust.

I mean, its wrong, but I also get it. The sympathy were tempted to feel for that child-killing corporate crony is one of the very few problems that we actually can blame mostly on Republicans. They spent eight years hammering the guy, but they couldnt criticize any of his actual evil policies because they were all policies that Republicans support too, from warmongering to bolstering the Walmart economy. So they had to make up the most ridiculous bullshit wed ever heard, which you couldnt just stand around listening to without screaming and disputing. They couldnt attack his Orwellian surveillance programs, so they said hes a Muslim. They couldnt attack his eat-the-poor neoliberalism, so they said hes a Kenyan. They couldnt attack the unforgivable bloodbaths he was inflicting on other countries, so they said hes a socialist (Ha! Remember that one?). So by attacking these moronic right-wing narratives, we often wound up tacitly taking his side, which fostered sympathy.

That sympathy is what needs to go. Anyone whos ever escaped from an abusive relationship knows that sympathy is the very first thing that you need to get rid of in order to be free, because sympathy is how a manipulator sucks you in. When youre dealing with a government that in 2013 gave itself the legal right to use media psy-ops on its own citizens, you cant afford to have any stray strands of sympathy laying around out there. The war were fighting against the oligarchy is first and foremost a media war, and we may be certain that any sympathies progressives maintain toward their establishment oppressors will be exploited. By letting ourselves really see Obama for the vicious ecocidal warmongering corporatist that he is and letting the resulting disgust wash through us, we are inoculating ourselves against sympathy for him and everyone like him. That disgust will serve as a kind of psychological gag reflex that rescues us from swallowing any more of their bullshit.

Obama is not the poor widdle victim here, the American public is. Remember that not even a year after the taxpayer took the brunt of the damage from the banks idiotic gamble on subprime loans, he was out there inspiring rallies of people with his talk of hope and change, but at the exact same time as he was promising the American people that he would take Wall Street to task, in private he was allowing Citigroup to handpick his cabinet.

Just let that sink in for a minute. He was out there galvanizing and re-energizing the whole progressive movement, commanding giant rallies of people with his inspiring words and heartfelt promises, but at the very same time, he was emailing Wall Street to get their list for his cabinet appointments. Remember, this email wasnt after hed won. Hed engaged in this transaction while he was still campaigning, still sucking up every bit of hope America had for reversing the ravages of neoliberalism. He. Was. Lying.

That does not deserve sympathy. He knew what he was doing and he wasnt forced into it by any obstructionist congress. The stage was already set. One could easily make the case that he not only killed off hope for change, but that he meant tothat the whole thing was deliberate from the start and that he meant to magnetize any hope left in the bruised and abused population, and suck it into the vortex forever, leaving everyone despondent and without hope. But one things for sure: he certainly never intended to give America the changes he was promising. Ever. The Citigroup email proves that beyond a doubt.

And now hes out there raking in the cash. So I do not weep for Obama, and neither should you.

A friend of mine who has a background in Alcoholics Anonymous once shared with me her view that the majority of 12-steppers are actually pre-Step 1that most of them really havent really grokked into how powerless they are over their addiction in any meaningful way. Well I see rejecting Obama as Step 1 of fighting the progressive revolution, and I think it might be possible that a majority of progressives havent fully done that yet. Some of my readers will have already worked their way down this rabbit hole and processed what needs to be processed while many others will find it a bit confronting, but I think everyone can benefit from a little more Obama hate. We must never go back there. We must unequivocally reject anyone who would take us back there.

We dont get to keep him. We dont get to keep the first black president. We dont get to let that be ours; we have to reject it, in the same way wed have to reject the first female president had Hillary won. Any pride in him, any benefit of the doubt because of his place in history, is an obstacle to judging his true behavior for what it is, as it is. I do sincerely hope there can one day be presidents who transcend racial barriers and shatter glass ceilings and also do their best to advance a pro-human agenda, but Barack Obama was no such president. Hes not ours. Kick him out.

Caitlin Johnstone is a reader-supported independent journalist from Melbourne, Australia. Her political writings can be found on Medium and on her Facebook page.

Continued here:
If Progressives Don't Wake Up to How Awful Obama Was, Their Movement Will Fail - Observer

In line with thetrend of traditionally liberal mainstream media outlets embracing establishment Republican voices, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt is reportedlydiscussing getting his own show with MSNBC. Hewitt, who was hired by The Washington Post in February 2017 as a columnist, would join recent MSNBC acquisition from Fox News Greta Van Susteren at MSNBC. However, MSNBC isnt the only media outletignoring complaints from progressives that the network panders too much to the center and establishment.

The New York Times recently hired Wall Street Journalcolumnist Bret Stephens, a move which has sparked criticism due to the fact that in past columns he has claimedthat climate change, institutional racism, and campus rape are imaginary enemies of liberalism. In Stephens first column, he backtracks by writing thatclimate change is real but contends that skepticism of the threat it poses is justified by science.

While The New York Times and MSNBC have shifted toward the center to embrace the demographic of Republicans that voted for Mitt Romney butare anti-Trump, they leave progressives without representationon their platform, despite the overwhelming, nationwide popularity of Sen.Bernie Sanders. The New York Times op-ed section included two staunch defenders of Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries, Paul Krugman and Charles Blow, who often defendedClintonby attacking Sanders. MSNBC includes Joy Reid as a host on their network, who elevated critics of Sanders like Al Giordano, a random anti-Sanders Twitter troll. The other leading network hosts, like Rachel Maddow, have propagated disingenuous narratives about Sanders supporters as well. No MSNBC host representsany semblance of progressive ideas. In fact, when MSNBC provided coverage confirming Sanders supporters criticisms offormer DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz during the Democratic primaries, MSNBC President Phil Griffin halted the coverage after receiving an angry phone call from Wasserman Schultz.

In addition to conservative hires, several mainstream media outlets have hired former Clinton staffers to join their ranks. The Washington Post hired former Clinton campaign Chair John Podesta in February 2017. CNN brought on ClintonPress Secretary Brian Fallon as a contributor. Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri has been regularly featured in the TheWashington Postand MSNBC. Clintoncampaign Manager Robby Mook has made several appearances on mainstream news networksas he continues propagating the narrative that Russia interfered in the election to avoid responsibility for Clintons election loss. This revolving door of political staffers joining mainstream media outlets before their next gig in politics has become standard practice within the industry, and its rotting it from within.

Instead of making hiresto account for the lack of progressives in media, MSNBC, The New York Times, and other mainstream media outlets have shifted toward the right, hoping to make a dent inFox News ratings. This shift is part of a broader movement from the political and corporate media establishment to continue brushing off Sanders and his progressive supporters as the far left. This pejorative categorization of the far left suggeststhat progressives are radical, fringe and have little support. On the contrary, Sanders widespread popularity both within his base and outside of it are a testament to the fact that progressive policies are no longer fringe. Rather, they are deliberately ignored by the corporate media establishmentas they attempt to mitigate the popularity of these policy proposals. In doing so, mainstream media continues to descend into irrelevancy and broadens its disconnect with Americans, whose mistrust in mainstream media is at anall-time high.

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Liberal Mainstream Media Continues Blacking Out Progressives, Hires Conservatives - Observer

I have found my silver lining!The dark cloud of election night and a Donald Trump presidency has lifted or at least thinned.

Nov. 9, 2016, as I awoke (probably still drunk), picked myself off my bed, dried my eyes and applied my mask, I did what can only be described as a Hail Mary:

I ordered books off Amazon.

While this might seem a small step in a general direction, these were special books. Although I havent gotten through them all (yet), the first has given me new pride in my Oklahoma home.

Davis D. Joyces collected essays,An Oklahoma I Had Never Seen Before,changes my life with every new sitting. Each essay brings a new facet of our progressive beginnings: from Kate Barnard and prairie populism to a personal essay by Clara Luper, the collection of the peoples history easesthe aches in every progressive-stuck-in-a-red-states soul.

(Editors Note:The text below referencesthis article by Jim Loganas well as this book by Musselwhite and Crawford.)

The annals of time have been cruel to our first hero, Kate Barnard. As a pioneering reformer whose political career started almost a decade before the passage of the 19th Amendment, she lives on as a feminist icon for Oklahoma progressives.

Barnard started her career as a teacher in Oklahoma City. Within 10years, she had moved on to social reform. As one of the authors of the Shawnee Demands, her belief in child-labor laws and mandatory childhood education made a dramatic impact on the Demands, which would soon become the basis for our new states constitution.

With the first election, Barnard became the first woman elected to public office in Oklahoma and only the second nationwide (again, before women were allowed to vote). While the first state Legislature expected her to sit quietly in her corner and attend her feminine duties, Barnard had other plans.

Within a year, she had created drastic changes in Oklahomas prison system (or lack thereof). Having infiltrated a Kansas penitentiary housing Oklahoman prisoners and seeing the abominable conditions, including torture, Barnard petitioned the state to build its own prison system and end many inhumane practices previously in use.Gaining national attention from the scandal, Barnard began speaking across the country about prison reform.

This, combined with her new crusade championing orphaned Native children, would prove to be her downfall.

Native children were stripped of land and mineral rights, abused by court-appointed guardians and subjected to aracist, capitalist system by ones entrusted with their care. As she continued protecting the rights of children, Barnard would end up taking on judges, representatives and corporations.

In response, the Legislature continuously attacked Barnard as well as her prosecutor. Unable to remove her from office without a popular vote, they gutted her budget and created popular dissidence for her new campaign as well as her focus on speaking publicly nationwide.

Sadly, Barnard faded into obscurity later in life. Suffering from a skin disease as well as other health complications, shedied alone in a hotel room at the age of 54. For more than 50 years, her body resided in obscurity in an unmarked grave.

Todays young Oklahoman women can take solace in Kate Barnards story. In a millennial generation stunted by a poor economy and the shackles of growing student loans, fellow late bloomers remind us that its never too late to start caring or effect change. Barnards compassion for the poor, unrepresented and abused masses in a state that so often forgets so many of its citizens reminds us all to add a little more sympathy to our everyday humanity.

I highly recommend you visit Barnards grave in Fairlawn Cemetery and pay tribute to a local heroine in any way you see fit.

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Kate Barnard: An icon for Oklahoma progressives - NonDoc

Today as I write marks the first 100 days of President Donald Trump's administration. It's almost an abomination of equating the concept of 100 days to Trump, since this comes from President Franklin Roosevelt's first 100 days in office in 1933. That was a remarkable beginning of his administration, when a variety of economic programs were enacted to confront the severity of the Great Depression. He set the standard for the beginning of any administration, and few, if any, subsequent ones have come anywhere close to the mark with the exception of Lyndon Johnson's first full 100 days after his election in 1964 following the Kennedy assassination. By comparison, Trump is a joke, since, in his first 100 days, instead of pursing policies to help people, his proposals have been aimed at hurting people. For example, the Republican health care plan that tried to change Obamacare would have thrown millions off of their health insurance.

Trump's first 100 days have been further filled with attacks on our constitutional liberties and an assault on federal programs that provide a safety net for Americans. Instead, as seen in both his version of a new health insurance program and in his proposed tax cuts, everything about his administration is to support the very rich. Trump's beginning is largely a failure with respect to any achievements. On the other hand, he continues to succeed in polarizing the country and emboldening the extreme right including anti-immigrant nativists and those harboring racist views to people of color. Trump stands for an America of the past with all of its troubling aspects and is totally against the reality of the new diverse America that is the future of the country.

One other success can be linked to Trump's first 100 days: He has helped to create a new progressive opposition that is involving millions of Americans who will not succumb to Trump's authoritarian state. The massive demonstrations throughout the country and the confrontation at congressional town hall meetings are all testimony of a new political movement to first defend our rights and the federal programs that support people.

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However, this defensive movement has to also begin to go on the offensive looking forward to the 2018 elections and the defeat of the Republicans in the House and Senate. The system may be corrupt and failing, but progressives still have to work through it, especially with respect to the electoral system. As Csar Chvez said, we can work in the system but not with it. People power can make a difference in changing the entrenched institutions of power, and we have to take advantage of it. Progressives have to remember that their aim is not just to change people in power and their hate speech, but also to begin to change the institutions. We need to keep our eyes on the prize. It is not just getting rid of the Trumpities but the system that gives rise to Trumpism. We have to remain optimistic that this can be done and that it will be done.

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Trump at 100 days: It's time for progressives to go on the offensive - National Catholic Reporter (blog)

As the United States wraps up the first 100 days of Donald Trumps administration the worst first 100 days of any administration, according to various assessmentsmillions of Americans are expressing horrified surprise not at that abysmal record, (itll get worse in the second 100 days), but rather, at former President Barak Obamas speaking fee: $400,000 for a talk on health care, to a Wall Street firm. And in the wake of this (not so) shocking news item, yet more articles are being published reminding us of the reality of his actions, behind the beautiful faade of the elegant, loving, scandal-free model family.

Before that, and scandal-ridden as he was, Bill Clinton was described by TV political show host Rachel Maddow as the best Republican president this country ever had. Maddows description is a sad variation on the sorry refrain we hear in progressive circles today, that the reason we got into the mess we are currently in, is our leniency with what has come to be considered the left. Indeed, we seem to fall very easy prey to the power of grammatically-correct, eloquent statements, even when they are utterly belied by the speakers actions.

Obama, as well as the Clintons, both Bill and Hillary, are only a few of the many politicians that have completely departed from a stated commitment to progressive causes, into implementing actions that range from neo-liberal to outright hawkish. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, who will receive an Israel advocacy award from StandWithUs on May 7th, is another such example.

Murrays record is exemplary of that of fake progressives and their subservience to established systems of oppression and disenfranchisement. Most recently, in the wake of Trumps Muslim and Immigrant Ban, he defiantly stated that Seattle will remain a sanctuary city, even as the Seattle Police Department stopped transit service to the Sea-Tac International Airport to stem the flow of protesters heading there. Before that, and also during his administration, members of the Seattle Police Department went on counter-terrorism seminars in Israel sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, a Zionist organization more concerned with Israel advocacy than with the defense of civil rights. Not surprisingly, considering the fact that the Israeli military and police are invested in defending an illegal occupation and repressing the indigenous impulse towards freedom and dignity, the Seattle Police Department is now under consent decree because of the racism and violence it has characteristically engaged in. Murray has also facilitated the building of a new youth jail in the historically African American part of the city, despite sustained opposition from his constituents. And while he expressed his opposition to that facility, it was his administration that granted the permits, and his lawyers who joined the countys efforts to deny anti-prison organizers the opportunity to be heard, to appeal the permits for the new jail. Today, as Palestinian prisoners in Israels jails are currently engaged in a hunger strike for dignity and human rights, up to 750 prisoners in the Northwest Detention Center, one of the largest immigration detention centers in the country, are currently on hunger strike to protest their appalling conditions. And while Murray is not directly in charge of that prison, immigrant rights organizers say that Washington state politicians claim that they will not follow through with Trumps immigration ban is proving to be a paper tiger. The connections between the two hunger strikes, one just outside of Seattle, the other in Israeli jails, will be foregrounded with a solidarity rally by Palestinian rights activists on May 13th, days after Murray will have been honored by StandWithUs.

Like other fake progressives, Mayor Murray consistently denounces racism, issuing statement upon statement about his city being welcoming, tolerant, a sanctuary, yet rather than side with the victims of racism, he has chosen to align himself with an apartheid country whose very existence as the Jewish state hinges on discrimination. An openly gay man, he has also jumped on the pinkwashing bandwagon, and agreed to keynoting a pinkwashing conference in Israel in 2015, despite appeals from the Seattle queer community to stop promoting that country as a gay haven, when in fact it misrepresents its own intolerance, and exploits regional homophobia, to distract from its egregious overall human rights abuses.

According to StandWithUss event information, Murray is being honored for standing up to anti-Israel pressure, and remaining a good friend of the Seattle-area Jewish community. StandWithUss claim is intentionally misrepresentative, as the Zionist organization knows full well that many members of the Seattle-area Jewish community, from the vibrant Jewish Voice for Peace local leadership and general membership, to the many Jewish members of QuAIA-Seattle (Queers Against Israeli Apartheid), are completely opposed to Zionism. Similarly, members of the Seattle-area Jewish community are spearheading the newly-launched JVP Deadly Exchange campaign, which seeks to end US-Israeli police partnerships.

Yet even as ample documentation keeps streaming in from various quarters, including the Israeli government itself, that Israel is an apartheid country that consistently, systematically, engages in human rights violations, Murray stands not with his own constituents, and not with the progressive Jewish community in Seattle, but with apologists for Zionism.

Murray is currently the incumbent in a mayoral race with another nine candidates, and is attempting to sound more progressive in his bid to be re-elected in a liberal city. Nevertheless, at the close of his four-year tenure as mayor, (and well over 20 years in political office in King County) Murray is not being honored by immigrants, youth activists, anti-prison organizers, people of color, the homeless, the queer community, but rather, by StandWithUs, an organization devoted to sugarcoating violent racist settler-colonialism.

Obama was our first black president, Hillary Clinton would have been our first female president, Ed Murray is Seattles first openly gay mayor, in an interracial marriage. These are indeed social breakthroughs. But at this critical juncture, we need to look beyond the symbolism of an individual. Throughout history, the greatest progressive leaders and organizers, even when grounded in the issue closest to their circumstances, have understood the global interconnectedness of oppressive systems. Martin Luther King Jr. wanted to end segregation and voter disenfranchisement, but he also opposed war and militarism overseas. Nelson Mandela knew that the freedom of black South Africans was incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians. At the grassroots level, Palestinians understand that the struggle to block the North Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock is a struggle for indigenous sovereignty. Today, the organizers of the International Womens Strike oppose sexism, but also racism and colonialism around the globe.

At this juncture, as the US critically needs to free itself from the grip of corrupt politicians and the devastation they are wreaking on all our social networks, the question we need to ask is how we can avoid more fake progressives in the future.

One answer may well be that we need to look away from politicians, and focus on amplifying and escalating the work grassroots organizers are doing, with no ambition to holding political office. We can put all our energy into uplifting the efforts of our community members, rather than our supposed representatives.

But since political offices must be filled, we need to support our organic leaders as they shoulder that role. And we must always, always, stay away from Zionists and Israel apologists. Because support for Israel, with its well-documented institutionalized racism, hypermilitarism, settler-colonialism, its violation of international law and the human rights of its indigenous community, is a fail-proof indicator of moral corruption and disrespect for disenfranchised communities everywhere.

Link:
Fake progressives - Mondoweiss