Obama & the Fake Debt Ceiling Crisis: This President Is Really Just Smarter Than You Are [View All]

[Karmadillo]

http://www.blackagendareport.com/obama-fake-debt-ceiling-crisis_smarter-than-you

Obama & the Fake Debt Ceiling Crisis: This President Is Really Just Smarter Than You Are
Wed, 07/27/2011 - 13:05 — Bruce A. Dixon

It's taken a long while, but I'm finally coming around. I'm about ready to admit the truth. Supporters of the president have long insisted that The Man simply knows things most of us don't. After all, he's the president. He's got access to the facts, the figures. He's looking further, they say, seeing deeper, playing sixth dimensional chess while most of us can barely get our minds around checkers. You know, they just might be right. If there's one thing this phony debt ceiling crisis proves, it's that Barack Obama really is smarter than most of us, especiall smarter than the tens of millions who voted him into office.

Before we examine that any deeper, we'll need a working definition of “smartness.” Let's make it simple. We'll call it the ability to get things done your way in a complex world, a world where lots of other people would rather see them done some other way. By that yardstick, who is smarter? The voters and volunteers who made Obama's career possible? Or Barack Obama himself? Who's getting what he wants, and who's getting left out?

For useful answers, we need look no further than the current trumped up crisis over the federal debt ceiling. Debt ceilings have been raised scores of times in recent years, 14 times under the Bush-Cheney administration alone. This time is an emergency only because Wall Street banksters, corporate media and the good cops of the Democratic party along with the bad cops of the Republican party agree to say it is. The government and the economy then, will run out of money unless Medicare, Medicaid and social security are savagely cut so that “job creating” speculators and banksters can receive another round of tax cuts.

Obama supporters whine and wring their hands in impotent fury, pointedly threatening a loss of enthusiasm for his 2012 re-election campaign. But their good cop president and his party leaders are all about pre-emptive compromise, meeting the bad cop Republicans half, three quarters or nine-tenths of the way to a goal that moves further rightward every hour. The president's unwillingness to stand with the Democratic party's electoral base, the nation's poor and working people, is for many Obama supporters utterly inexplicable.

lots more...