Post mortem thread. Why did we lose?

[woo me with science]

167. There's that word, "miracle" again. It's a neat way to gloss over the actual record and

to pretend that "miracles" are needed to appoint people to your cabinet and administration who are not raging corporatists, over and over and over again.

To pretend that it takes a "miracle" NOT to go to the Supreme Court over and over again to defend and expand Bush's surveillance and police state. Or decline to renew an executive order collecting mass surveillance on Americans. Or choose not to sign approval of "Kill List" and indefinite detention, or choose not to reject an amendment to your approval of "Kill Lists" that would have made it clear that American citizens are not included. Or reject Cass Sunstein at the door rather than embracing his visions of mass propaganda aimed at Americans to get them to support this fascistic garbage.

To pretend that it takes a "miracle" NOT to embrace Arne Duncan as your education secretary and oversee the continued corporatization of American schools. Or to choose NOT to sell off huge parts of the Gulf of Mexico to gas and oil companies. Or maybe not to choose to ramp up the US nuclear weapons program to the tune of a TRILLION DOLLARS right now, after you've just signed *another* round of food stamp cuts and a farm bill based on "pension smoothing" and one out of four American children live in poverty.

To pretend that it it takes a "miracle" NOT to wage a war against journalists and whistleblowers, to hold a journalist in prison in Yemen, to change the meaning of the Espionage Act so that it now applies even to receipt of leaked information by journalists that is NOT harmful to the United States....and to use that Espionage Act against more journalists than any other president in history....to the point that we are plummeting in press freedoms and reputation around the world.

To pretend that it takes a "miracle" to *start out* in budget negotiations with something on the table other than cuts in social services for the most vulnerable Americans....say, even to MENTION something like corporate welfare instead, or maybe NOT making 75 percent of the Bush tax cuts permanent.

And to CHOOSE....when one third of American families are a paycheck away from homelessness and your "recovery" has resulted in a mass replacement of good jobs with low pay temporary and service work, to CHOOSE as your upcoming big agenda items the TPP and the TISA, which will slash jobs, force Americans to compete with Third World workers, and hand corporations unprecedented power over even our own democratic laws and protections.

You know, people have posted those lists over and over and over again. You know the lists I mean...the ones that keep getting longer and longer and longer....The lists that don't show the administration putting progressive ideas on the table and being obstructed, but rather show them PROACTIVELY, OVER AND OVER AGAIN, defending, entrenching, and expanding the MOST malignant policies that began under Bush and aggressively expanding the corporate agenda.

Remember? Here is a whole truckload of specific examples for you, if you're still pretending you don't:

Poor Obama.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5601580

Seriously. Nobody is asking for a miracle. They are asking for representation for the people rather than corporations. Which they are not getting now, because BOTH PARTIES ARE FLOODED WITH CORPORATE MONEY. Why did President Obama appoint a shill for the telecoms to the FCC, and why is the administration now dragging its feet on protecting net neutrality, all their empty words (read: lies) about their intentions notwithstanding? Look at corporate contributions to the Obama campaign. And multiply that across every issue, across every corporate Democrat and every corporate Republican. The parties are bought. Our nation is bought. A study through Princeton University has confirmed that we are bought.

You know it's systemic and a bipartisan problem. You're not stupid. I don't know the motivations of those who cooperate in selling this garbage, this absurd corporate narrative of incessant denial that poisons this nation and keeps us circling wagons and unable to unite against the corruption that is murdering democracy and allowing these corporate monsters to drive millions into war and poverty and despair. But I wish those participating would take a good, long, hard look at what they really want to stand for in their lives and for their families and children.

Stop pretending. Seriously. Spare it.