Gary Rumor’s Anti-Entropic Continuum

When Reagan was elected president Americans began to fall asleep. By the time of his reelection that was it America was snoring away. When Clinton was elected, there was a slight stirring in the sleeping body but after waking up for a minute the body went back into a deep slumber.
When Bush Jr was selected by the elites the body went into a coma. It was not much longer before it seemed that the body would not recover consciousness. Then there was a great conflagration and Wall Street started burning and peoples feet got toasty. It was when their own houses began to burn that most Americans finaly woke up. It was just in time. If they had waited any longer they would have burned up with their homes.
In Sri Lanka that is what has happened to the Tamils who lost their homes in the war. This week the Sri Lankan government defeated the Tamil Tigers and now the victors are celebrating. UN head Ban Ki-Moon is telling the government that they have to take care of the 300,000 Tamils who are trapped in camps set up by the government.
Somalia has had a return to violence between the pro government and Al Shabaab militants who are claimed to be linked with Al Qaeda. The BBC has reported on an increase in violence. Today on NPR there was a report on a Danish shipping magnate and the negotiator for pirates having developed a business friendship. It seems that the former pirate is now angling to become an expert on pirates to explain to the shipping industry how to deal with the increasingly sophisticated Somali pirate clans.
Today Obama signed a bill to limit the credit card companies control. It is about time. With 78% of Americans using credit cards and rates going up to around 30% in a market that until now was virtually unregulated. I personaly have found that the card companies do not honor the insurance plans they promote and that I have been paying for a plan that simply is a fraud. Three months after applying for the benefit that I was paying almost $20 a month for for each card, I have not received any freezing of the interest on the cards, I have been inundated with harassing calls day in and day out where they ask the same thing over and over, how much can you pay. This goes on 7 days a week and when I ask them when is my insurance going to be put in effect they tell me that I have to call them. After being told to fill out a bunch of paperwork and mailing it to them. Interesting that they can call me 3 times a day every day to ask for my money but they cannot be bothered to give me a benefit that I paid for. On top of that they raised my interest rates.
I have had to put my foot down and insist that they lower my rates. After all if my tax dollars can go to pay for their bailout and they get 1% or less interest rates from the Fed on money, how can they dare to try to charge 30% interest for a poor person who was until a week ago unemployed and unable to pay anything at all? It is outrageous and it is the reason why we need strict legislation to regulate them because they know no shame and Obama realized that if action was not taken there would be a refusal on the part of Americans to continue to pay. We would insist upon a jubilee and vote with our feet away from plastic.
The BBC is reporting that Europeans are happy to see that Obama is closing Guantanamo and Germans seem to think that terrorists use Guantanamo as an excuse. American policies in the Middle East under Bush helped the terrorists gain support from the masses of the populace. Middle Easterners see appeasing Iran as a sign of weakness but the closing of Guantanamo as a sign of strength. As the Republicans are saying, America is Frenchifying. I wonder when they will start drinking Lattes and eating croissants like the rest of us and give up on Coors beer and shooting baby seals with their now legal concealed guns at national parks?
Cheney lost the debate on national security yesterday according to most pundits I have seen and heard today. On the Nightly News Hour the talking heads were saying that Cheney not only did not speak for the Republicans but that he did not even speak for most of the Bush Administration who gave up on harsh interrogation methods by 2004 and 2005. When Rumsfeld went so did most of the wind in the hard core sails. As one pundit said on NPR today, the President is really continuing the policies of the later Bush administration which had been trying to get rid of the Guantanamo detainees since at least 2006 when the Supreme Court told them that it was time to give the detainees due process.
All Obama has done is to insist on a deadline for the closing down of Guantanamo. Same as his call for a deadline to get out of Iraq. His plan is virtually the same as what Bush negotiated at the end of last year. What is the difference? Only that Obama makes the left feel better because he likes to take a proactive pro peace stance in contrast to the Bush administration tough guy stance. But in reality he is increasing the war in Afghanistan and he stated that he is taking the privilege into his own hands to try prisoners by military trials something that Bush insisted upon.
Where is the substance? Good question. From a radical perspective it is mostly a matter of image. In reality Obama is no more to the left than Nixon. From 1970 to 1972, Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed laws including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. He also signed executive orders and international agreements on environmental issues and created OSHA. They were needed and it was on Nixon’s watch that we got them.
So far from Obama we have a continuation of Bush initiated polices on the economy, we have an increase in the military in Afghanistan, and we have legislation to control credit cards. Wow. Too bad we didn’t get legislation to control the banks where it really hurts in the housing rip-off. Guantanamo is a dead letter, it is going away one way or another. But this week we saw how much control the right still has in Washington. Cheney represents the shadow of fear and Obama is the new dawn. But is this the real world or just symbolic?
Is America waking up? Perhaps it is. But let us hope the new President moves on to make substantial changes and not just wastes time boxing with shadows. If we can just get out of Iraq, out of Afghanistan, get single payer health care and real environmental legislation, then perhaps we will have a president to the left of Nixon.