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There is no real opposition to Obama.
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This week President Obama had a man murdered. He put a hit on a man merely suspected of being involved with "Al Qaeda" and of participating in several terrorist acts. This is now a routine power of the American Presidency- having people murdered without any sort of due process.
The US routinely murders "suspects" in Pakistan- often times along with their families and friends or any poor slob who happens to be within the vicinity of an exploding drone.
President Bush used this power quite extensively as well. In fact he boasted of murdering "Al Qaeda suspects" all over the world in his 2003 State of the Union address:
All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries.
And many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.
Yes. An American President stood before Congress and actually all but admitted to murdering untold numbers of suspects. He actually used the word "suspected" as well. And he received a standing ovation when he said it.
President Obama has embraced the Bush era torture memos- the ones written to justify blatantly illegal acts and that make Roe vs Wade look like tight legal reasoning. The justice department investigation of the CIA for overstepping these guidelines for torture in these sickening memos is actually worse than doing nothing- for by doing so they are enshrining the premise in these memos as law- that torture is legal! They are just going after those who overstepped "techniques" that were deliberately copied from those developed in the secret police reign of terror under Stalin in the Soviet Union.
His closing of GITMO is a meaningless empty gesture as he intends to simply use Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan to keep detainees beyond the reach of law.
He will continue the policy of rendition (or what would be called kidnapping if done by a mere mortal like you or me) of "suspects". Obama assures us that torture of suspects the US delivers to third party countries won't be allowed. Of course- the question then arises why bother with rendition at all since that is the whole purpose of rendition to begin with? Of course they will be tortured and Obama knows it. So does our media and so do the Republicans.
Obama has sent troops into Somalia, escalated the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan, and routinely murders batches of civilians in these countries with no declaration of war or even the bother of a flimsy congressional resolution.
President Obama also supported the blanket amnesty for government officials and telecom executives who broke myriad laws on the books in a wide ranging spying program that was launched and run by the Bush Administration. We won't ever get to know the extent of the spying or who was spied on and for what reasons.
The power being accumulated in the Presidency is frightening. It should be frightening to anyone concerned about government power or big government. These things should concern conservatives.
But they don't. Because what passes for a "conservative movement" in this country is really just an anemic corporate/DC controlled joke that supports never ending growth in spending on the military and the national security state and the select group of parasite companies and corporations that feed on that spending.
And they also spent 8 years defending the indefensible and advocating the most radical views on the power of the executive branch. There was nothing conservative about the crimes and wars the GOP supported, enabled, and cheered on during the Bush years.
So naturally they will not criticize Obama on these issues. Obama can spy on us all he wants. The GOP doesn't care- they can't wait to use that power again themselves. Obama can murder anyone in the world. The GOP won't say a word. In fact- they may call him a wimp if he doesn't murder a "suspect" every couple of months. Obama can make law anytime he wants with a signing statement. The GOP won't oppose that power. Obama can launch a military operation against any country he wants for any reason (usually the "reason" is based upon no more than a claim of a link to "Al Qaeda" from an anonymous "intelligence official") and the GOP will more than likely applaud rather than offer up any sort of opposition.
After all- they not only defended all these powers and crimes under their Dear Leader Bush- they even celebrated torture with a line of pro torture products. The GOP is a party that cheerfully supports torturing people . . . to death. . . and demands that no investigations of these murders ever occur.
But fear not. The GOP is doing something to stop the growth of government power. They are going after ACORN. Well- they have to do something! They have to give an appearance of opposition to something! So why not ACORN? A group of mostly poor and black ghetto activists who in 15 years have received less federal funds than it takes to run the Iraq war for one week. Perfect.
Back during the Clinton years- when I was very much a rabid young Clinton hating Republican- I remember the outraged reaction of my fellow conservatives when Clinton bombed an aspirin factory in Sudan murdering ONE night watchmen in what seemed like a "wag the dog" bombing.
Less than half a decade later the same "conservatives" that wanted Clinton brought to trial for murdering that Sudanese night watchmen- applauded a Republican President for boasting of murdering suspects all over the world and discarded their brains as they swallowed the most inane and preposterous pro war propaganda.
The same "conservatives" that railed against liberal judicial activism and the twisting of plain written law to serve political ends - had no problem with the absurd on their face justice department memos written after the fact to justify acts of illegal torture. The same group that said the "law is the law" when going after Clinton for perjury over his sexual indiscretions denounces with fury any hint of investigation into the systematic law breaking of the Bush administration.
The GOP and the conservative movement, on the most vital issue facing this country- the radical expansion of executive power- is without any sort of moral authority. Indeed- they are the originators of this trend.
So the GOP and most of the mainstream conservative movement can't and won't oppose Obama on the most serious abuses of power since they support and applaud those abuses of power when wielded by one of their own.
They offer no opposition to the ever growing number of foreign military bases and the truly comical, gargantuan, and almost wholly unnecessary military budgets.
So what we get instead is hundreds of hours of Fox News doing stories on corrupt poor ghetto activists. It is all they can do.
There is no real resistance to the growth of federal government power in this country. Even where the opposition appears real- like on health care- the GOP and the Dems will hammer out a "compromise" that will ensure that a handful of nominal "private" corporate entities are enriched and kept safe from competition in a rigged mercantilist market. Federal oversight over health care will just take place through a thin veneer of private corporations. And the GOP will cheer that on as being for the "Free market". Oh- and those evil poor people who used their political clout in DC (cause poor people have so much power in that town) to get trillions in bank bailout dollars- and took all that money and bought 40's and packs of Cools? They won't get anything- so that should make the GOP rank and file happy.
You wonder why Fox News spends so much time on ACORN? What else are they going to spend time on? Not Obama's lies about Iran. Not Hillary's lies about the Iranian nuclear program. Heck- the GOP supports those lies too. They want another war with Iran! Challenge Obama on Afghanistan? Please. The GOP won't offer up any resistance ot the growth of the Empire or any war that Obama wages. They can't say boo about Obama expanding the security state at home as they did more on that score under Bush than any President in history.
All the power that is the hallmark of tyrannical rulers-torture, wiretapping, discarding of habeas corpus, ignoring of the rule of law for the elite and connected, the increasing militarization of our police forces - all of these things the GOP supports. They and the Dems walk hand in hand in these crimes.
The GOP - as an opposition party - is less than useless. They are complicit in everything Obama does.
And what you see on Fox News? Contrived manufactured silliness that in the end? Matters nothing to nobody.
