"BUZZFLASH" Editor/Founder-- Cautions Obama!: "You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train!"

[KoKo]

BUZZFLASH'S, Mark Karlin (CHICAGO)threw folks off his site if they didn't support Obama ...way back in the day of the Campaign. He now does a "MEA CULPA" in this rant.
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Howard Zinn: "You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train." Obama Stands at Station Waving as the Train Goes By.

Submitted by mark karlin on Mon, 05/31/2010 - 7:35am.

MARK KARLIN FOR BUZZFLASH, EDITOR'S BLOG

When it comes to BP, Wall Street, global warming, and the insidious corporate control of government, Obama has shown himself to be the counterpoint to Howard Zinn: in action, Obama can be neutral as he is a bystander watching the rapacious corporate express whiz by.

Sure Obama sporadically makes a populist statement or two, but he does little or nothing to stop the high-speed destruction of our democracy, planet, and life by the predatory corporate train. At times, he appears little more than a passive bystander serving the interests of the corporations as they rapaciously ruin our economy and earth, deferring to them on bended knee, with just some meaningless words of protest because they are not backed by White House action. Either he was a secret corporatist all along who believes wealth merits respect and power; he is simply befuddled and paralyzed by what he is confronting; or he has some inscrutable long-term plan to rein in the corporations known only to him and at great cost to the planet while it mysteriously unfolds.

Alas, as BuzzFlash has been a great supporter of Obama and fought on his behalf in our editorial pages during the primary, we must finally admit that his soaring words had us fooled as we confront more of the same. Sure there has been some legislation passed to "rein" in Wall Street, but they don't seem too worried about it, and the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies are going to make out like bandits on healthcare reform. Obama was once a community organizer, but it was a long time ago, and now he is a protecter of the status quo of the corporate oligarchy that is destroying democracy, our economy and our very earth. His words of protest are meaningless without a big stick of action. He needs to stop playing golf with the heads of the big banks that caused our economic collapse and start talking jobs over lunch buckets with the Americans out of work and increasingly underpaid.

The reality is that on issues other than race, which thankfully appear to be of sincere concern to him, Obama is a tool of the corporate powers. Nothing can illustrate this more than the catastrophic disaster in the Gulf and the way BP has run circles around the White House and made it look like an impotent, disingenuous puppet of the largest corporation in the UK and the third largest energy corporation.

BuzzFlash is located in Chicago, and not very far away from where Obama had a barbecue weekend in his home neigborhood of Hyde Park Chicago. We love Hyde Park; it is an integrated intellectual oasis (think University of Chicago) on the mid-South Side of Chicago. But Obama is a wealthy man now; his friends are wealthy -- he is far from his days as a comunity organizer. He believes that wealth bestows privileges. He is the progressive whose philosophical ideas of equality and economic justice assuage his conscience, while he takes little action to achieve those goals, yielding most of the decision making to the corrupt, destructive global corporations.

Yes, we will still vote for Democrats over Republicans; and Obama in 2012 over any Republican. There are measurable differences in having Democrats in power. They do occasionally fight for some socially just causes, but the moments are rare. We breathe a whole lot easier under Obama than Bush and are thankful for that.

But that doesn't take away from the reality that the corporate express of greed and destruction speeds by as Obama waves, a seemingly helpless party -- although he is President of the United States -- to slow it down.

MARK KARLIN FOR BUZZFLASH, EDITOR'S BLOG

http://blog.buzzflash.com/editorblog/313

[Skittles]

1. it's about fucking time

they trashed Hillary during the campaign - they should have stayed NEUTRAL

[KoKo]

2. He was very vocal...and it hurt many of Buzzflash's Long Time Readers when he did that..

Even though I wasn't a Hillary supporter...I found his position (along with Move On) and others too "early out of the gate" to support Obama without proper input from their long time readers, donators, etc.

[Skittles]

6. it certainly did

and rightfully so

[snake in the grass]

14. I haven't read Buzzflash since...

...the primaries because of the widespread "Hillary is Satan"-irrationality therein.

[nashville_brook]

3. i've been in enough (completely mundane) positions of power to know that you can't come out swinging

i also know that it's really easy, once you're in those positions, to go along to get along. we have to make it more difficult to "go along." that's just the nature of power -- you have to bring some to the table.

[KoKo]

4. That's true what you say "NB." But, it's good to see Karlin admit...he maybe gave away something

"too early." I felt many of us on the left were told to "Go In and Get Along" to get a "Seat at the Table" way too early. We gave away our bargaining position without getting any promises to us that would hold true. Instead the very Corporatists who RAN BUSH and CLINTON are back in there.

We gave away, bargained away for nothing our POSITION after working so hard for Years...way too early.

It's a bit of "Hindsight" going here...but we who gave away everything...did really worry about it...and now it's biting all of us in the ass.

[nashville_brook]

11. i was in Clintonian Denial for SO LONG!! following my Clintonian Optimism...

makes sense...the first time i was legal to vote was in 1984, so Clinton was the hero i'd been waiting a LONG time for. with one defeat after another, i kept telling myself he had some plan in his back pocket. that, "globalism" and "free trade" and the "financialization" of our economy were "new" and good ideas. when the euphoria finally wore off the hangover set in and man, did it suck.

[tblue]

5. I thought I was about the only one who thought this way, however

I also think he's the only thing keeping us from the full-on assault by Republicans if they were to regain power. We'd be done for.

[KoKo]

7. But, aren't we Dems always being ruled by the "FEAR of Repug Worse?"

It's like we are always being threatened by the Bogey Man waiting in the Wings or the one who was President for Decades like Reagan...that will come back to haunt us. In many cases we need to be more afraid of our Elected Dems than the Bogey Man...since we see what our "Elected Dems" are capable of "Not Doing" for us... :shrug:

[volvoblue]

8. These days, unless someone is posturing in front of a camera or

screaming out every little thing they do, people just assume you are disengaged.
This meme of obama passively watching the world go by is shit.

this is the most under rated, under appreciated and misunderstood president of all time!

[ladjf]

9. I'm very sorry that I agree with this article. President Obama has

squandered numerous opportunities to unite America and help heal it's wounds. I have no idea why he did so.

[burnsei sensei]

10. In Obama,

as in Bill & Hillary Clinton and even in Elena Kagan, we are seeing the undermining of traditional liberalism by Third Way thinking.
These new Democrats are corporatists.
The Republicans call them socialists because they don't understand what corporatism is.
We are seeing the interests of corporations privileged, the interests of individual citizens, the real kind, disregarded.
And the conflicts of the past, which have yet to be addressed, go unheeded.
Traditional liberalism privileges the poor, tries to listen and empower the perspectives of those ignored.
It knows that the interests of the worker are not the same as those of the manager or owner.
The Left must study its roots and get back to them as soon as possible.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[G_j]

13. wrong time

for a Conservative Democrat.

[Enthusiast]

15. Yes, well said.

What a time for a conservative Democrat. Horrible. Time for a third party, a viable third party effort. And I don't mean anything like the libertarianism Tea Party joke.