Obama should resign, says - Ted Rall?

[fossten]

We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.

From health care to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn’t have the nerve to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now — before he drags us further into the abyss.

I refer here to Obama’s plan for “preventive detentions.” If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in “prolonged detention.” Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama’s shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.

In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street.

Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people’s lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can’t control, what George Orwell called “thoughtcrime” — contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.

http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2009/05/off-his-meds-ted-rall-calls-for-obama.html

 

[Calabrio]

http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2009/05/off-his-meds-ted-rall-calls-for-obama.html

Personally, I'm increasingly convinced that Obama intends to be a one term President. However, he may well accomplish more domestic change in that one term than FDR did in 4.

 

[PetesSweets86]

or Bush could ever do in 12!

 

[04SCTLS]

Ted Rall: Obama Should Resign

James Joyner | Saturday, May 30, 2009​

It’s been years since I’ve quoted Ted Rall here. He hasn’t appeared in a post title since September 2005’s “Rall: Charities are for Suckers.” The man’s eminently quotable, if in a train wreck sort of way, but constantly pointing out that some commentators are crazy attention whores really doesn’t advance the debate much.


But you’ve got to hand it to Rall: He’s a consistent loon.

We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.​

From health care to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn’t have the nerve to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?​

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now — before he drags us further into the abyss.​

Take that, Rush Limbaugh! In your face, G. Gordon Liddy!
For what it’s worth, while I didn’t vote for Obama and will quite probably* vote for his Republican opponent in 2012, I neither think Obama has done anything to merit resignation nor think he’s sold out to lobbyists any more than the next guy. Being president is much harder than being a pundit, in that actions have consequences.For example, I simultaneously believe the Turks committed genocide nearly a century ago and that the United States Government should refrain from rubbing their noses in it. Whatever satisfaction an individual might get from Speaking Truth to (Middling) Power, Turkey is an important ally at the nexus of several of our most pressing foreign policy hotspots. Alienating them over something that happened generations ago is foolish. The President Obama, faced with that reality, is more cautious than was Candidate Obama, is a feature, not a bug.
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It's easy to be a pundit or candidate.
Much harder when you have to follow through on the rhetoric.