At WHAT point does HE own it?

The Political Memo in today’s NYT minces few words in Blaming the Guy Who Came Before Doesn’t Work Long and I’d like to just tag right along with that.  Its thesis is clear.  The Obama administration wastes no opportunity to turn the phrase “we inherited a lot of problems”.

As President Obama struggles to turn around the moribund economy and confront multiple international issues, he wastes few opportunities to remind the country that the problems are not of his making.

“The financial crisis this administration inherited is still creating painful challenges for businesses and families alike,” Mr. Obama said this week as he proposed spending limits.

“We inherited a financial crisis unlike any that we’ve seen in our time,” he said last week as he thrust General Motors into bankruptcy.

His advisers and allies follow the same script. “The Obama administration inherited a situation at Guantánamo that was intolerable,” James L. Jones, the national security adviser, said of the military prison in Cuba. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton defended the Obama foreign policy in the same vein. “We inherited a lot of problems,” she said.

Mr. Obama is hardly the first president to point to his predecessor. Ronald Reagan blamed Jimmy Carter for the poor economy he inherited, just as Bill Clinton blamed the first President Bush and the younger Mr. Bush then blamed Mr. Clinton. Former Bush aides like Karl Rove argue that Mr. Obama has done it more extensively and routinely than other presidents have, although the Obama team denies that.

But at a certain point, a new president assumes ownership of the problems and finds himself answering for his own actions. For Mr. Obama, even some advisers say that moment may be coming soon.

I’d really like to extend the question of  when does he own it a bit further to what good does saying you inherited all these problems do when your solution is basically a continuation of those same failed policies?

In the two major areas of concern during the election and primary–the Iraq War and the Financial Crisis–we have not only seen continuation of the same dysfunctional policies, but we’ve also seen appointment of the same dysfunctional policy makers in both cases.  Timothy Geithner (with Obama’s consent and support) has basically been following the same policies of his predecessor Secretary of Wall Street Bailouts Hank Paulson. I know this because I’ve been following the economic policies quite closely because of obvious reasons. I have had to rely on others for examples in other policy areas.  To say there is a plethora is understatement. I am getting tired of flushing spam from seriously delusional  Obama voters into byte heaven that  mostly reads:  “Hillary would have done the same thing” and “he’s just doing what he has to at the moment, just wait it will change, you’ll see.”

Cannonfire has run a series of threads demonstrating how closely aligned President Obama’s policies have been to his predecessor.  I’ve spent a few days following the links from The Worm turns and turns.   One link is to Paul Craig Roberts at  Global Research and the title absolutely says everything.  It’s called Watching Obama Morph Into Dick Cheney.  This one especially appeals to me because of a post I took a lot of grief for back in the day that used a side-by-side Broke Back Mountain view of the boyz will be boyz.

From the Roberts piece (and yes I know he’s a old Reagan hack which makes this an EVEN more interesting statement to me):

Obama has not been in office four months and already a book could be written about his broken promises.

Obama said he would close the torture prison, Guantanamo, and abolish the kangaroo courts known as military tribunals. But now he says he is going to reform the tribunals and continue the process, but without confessions obtained with torture. Getting behind Obama’s validation of the Bush/Cheney policy, House Democrats pulled the budget funding that was to be used for closing Guantanamo.

The policy of kidnapping people (usually on the basis of disinformation supplied by their enemies) and whisking them off to third world prisons to be interrogated is to be continued. Again, Obama has substituted a “reform” for his promise to abolish an illegal policy. Rendition, Obama says, has also been reformed and will no longer involve torture. How would anyone know? Is Obama going to assign a US government agent to watch over the treatment given to disappeared people by third world thugs? Given the proclivity of American police to brutalize US citizens, nothing can save the victims of rendition from torture.

Obama has defended the Bush/Cheney warrantless wiretapping program run by the National Security Agency and broadened the government’s legal argument that “sovereign immunity” protects government officials from prosecution and civil suits when they violate US law and constitutional protections of citizens. Obama’s Justice Department has taken up the defense of Donald Rumsfeld against a case brought by detainees whose rights Rumsfeld violated.

In a signing statement this month, Obama abandoned his promise to protect whistle-blowers who give information of executive branch illegality to Congress.

Obama is making even more expansive claims of executive power than Bush. As Bruce Fine puts it: “In principle, President Obama is maintaining that victims of constitutional wrongdoing by the U.S. government should be denied a remedy in order to prevent the American people and the world at large from learning of the lawlessness perpetrated in the name of national security and exacting political and legal accountability.”

Obama, in other words, is committed to covering up the Bush regime’s crimes and to ensuring that his own regime can continue to operate in the same illegal and unconstitutional ways.

Obama is fighting the release of the latest batch of horrific torture photos that have come to light. Obama claims that release of the photos would anger insurgents and cause them to kill our troops. That, of course, is nonsense. Those resisting occupation of their land by US troops and NATO mercenaries are already dedicated to killing our troops, and they know that Americans torture whomever they capture. Obama is fighting the release of the photos, because he knows the barbaric image that the photos present of the US military will undermine the public’s support for the wars that enrich the military/security complex, appease the Israel Lobby, and repay the campaign contributions that elect the US government.

As for bringing the troops home from Iraq, this promise, too, has been reformed. To the consternation of his supporters, Obama is leaving 50,000 US soldiers in Iraq. The others are being sent to Afghanistan and to Pakistan, where on Obama’s watch war has broken out big time with already one million refugees from the indiscriminate bombing of civilians.

Meanwhile, war with Iran remains a possibility, and at Washington’s insistence, NATO is conducting war games on former Soviet territory, thus laying the groundwork for future enrichment of the US military/security complex. The steeply rising US unemployment rate will provide the needed troops for Obama’s expanding wars.

Obama can give a great speech without mangling the language. He can smile and make people believe his rhetoric. The world, or much of it, seems to be content with the soft words, which now drape Dick Cheney’s policies in pursuit of executive supremacy and US hegemony.

There has been some transfer of ownership of certain problems as demonstrated in the NY Times article.  Obama may have inherited a financial crisis but has continued handling it in a similar way.  I see only two distinctly new policies.  The stimulus plan is part and parcel of his administration.  Expansion of the War in Afghanistan is another Obama policy.

Mr. Obama got a taste of that in recent days as he and his White House were put on the defensive trying to explain why the unemployment rate had risen to 9.4 percent when his staff had predicted it would peak at 8 percent as long as Congress passed his stimulus plan, which lawmakers dutifully did. Mr. Obama obviously did not create the recession passed to him, but it was his administration that set the expectation that his policy would keep it from deepening as far as it has.

Challenges stacking up overseas may increasingly be seen as Mr. Obama’s soon enough too, say advisers, critics and some outside experts. By sending an extra 21,000 American troops to Afghanistan and replacing the commander there, Mr. Obama has now made that war his, as many analysts in Washington see it. The forceful position toward Israel that Mr. Obama has adopted in recent weeks over settlement expansion may also make the Palestinian conflict more and more his own problem.

However, let’s go back to my question again.  Is ramping up the war in Afghanistan something you would expect from a typical Democrat president or is that something you’d have expected under Bush-Cheney 3?   If you remember my assessment of the stimulus, I joined in the chorus with well-known progressive economists like Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Brad de Long in saying it was way too short on job-creating oomph and way too long on Republican-like tax cuts.  Have you seen any truly progressive measures put forth to solve the job problems facing the U.S.?  Did we really need more tax cuts when people and businesses are losing taxable income?

Don’t even get me started on this health care situation where we were promised a President Obama would differ little from a President Hillary Clinton.  Yesterday, in a speech in Wisconsin, we heard the President continue to dismiss single payer.   (Read this from Lambert at Corrente.) Also, we may have freed up some funds abroad for real birth control but here at home we’re still “studying” the idea that a pharmacist whose job it is to just dispense pills can opt out of dispensing pills to people that need them because it might violate his personal superstition.  Let me tell you, when I see some one opt out of selling those little blue pills, I’ll believe we’ve achieved gender equity, even if the policy is wrong, wrong, wrong!!!  (This may be the best we can hope for, because it appears the conscious clause is going no where!)

The worst abomination is the continuation of  the policies that subsidize faith-based initiatives.  These programs continue to exist, thrive, and be places where political operatives from church-based GOTV activities are rewarded for  appallingly dark ages mentality.  So much for the rule of science and reality promised during the campaign!  Witness the last appointment of an anti choice hack to an appointment in the HHS.

President Obama has announced that Alexia Kelley, founder of the antiabortion group Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, will serve as the director of the Health and Human Services Department’s Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, arousing the ire of some abortion rights activists.

“Catholics in Alliance believes in the sanctity of all human life—from conception until natural death,” says the group’s website. “Our Catholic faith and the Catholic social tradition affirm that all life is sacred, and that every person has essential worth and dignity. Therefore, we support a consistent culture of life that includes protections for unborn children…”

Kelley’s appointment has revealed the chasm between what US News & World Report’s Dan Gilgoff calls “religious progressives” versus the “religious left.”

So, since very little in the policy realm has changed, I ask you, how can you continue to blame Bush/Cheney? I want to see real change in the economy, true recognition of constitutional rights, and absolute transparency in the business of governance. But how is this possible  if you continue the policies of the very people you blame?

At some point these questions must continue forward to the inevitable AND when will the press and the democratic masses finally hold him to account?

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