President Obama is NOT a Coward

Barack Obama is no coward. Just looking at a few things he's done in his life can tell you that beyond a doubt.

My diary at Daily Kos was a response to the cowardice I see in his administration, not in him personally. However, he's in charge and the buck stops with him, though I should not have used the word 'coward' to vent my anger at the lack of courage coming from the White House.

The Obama Administration is not as progressive as I would like it to be. President Obama is right of center himself. It would be foolish of me to think that he would represent all of the same things I do as a progressive. However, I feel he needs to be. His administration is under the false impression that America wants to be more like Glenn Beck than Howard Dean. Even when shown proof that the American people want more progressive action, the Obama Administration still insists on leaning to the right.

Obama has a win with the Health Care Reform Act but the law is incomplete and falls far short of bringing fairness and balance to our health care problem. Expanding Medicare to allow buy-ins is one way to achieve this goal, something he is against. For too long, we have catered and groveled before the for-profit health care industry. We've allowed this bullshit to continue because our leaders have bought into the whole 'profit before people' crap the GOP's been spilling since the bad ol' days of Ronnie Reagan.

Capitalism is as old and decrepit as communism. Communism crumbled under its own weight because people can't be trusted to be reasonable. If you put that much power in the hands of a few men, those men will become corrupt sure as rain in Seattle. Capitalism is on a different wavelength but still falls under the same premise. Put that much power in the hands of a few companies and those companies, and by default their CEO's, will become corrupt.

Years of oppression came to an end in the Soviet Union because the people finally saw what was happening to them. In 1976, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band played a concert in the Soviet Union to a television audience of about 145 million people. This allowed the folks to see how life was outside the fences. What followed was years of black market items like Levi's, rock music, and other Western goodies coming across the border. Soviet citizens saw what it was really like outside, not the bullshit propaganda the Politburo had been feeding them for 60 years. It was the beginning of the end of the USSR.

It's the 21st Century and here in America, we are having our own eye opener. The progressive movement is seeing what the last 60 years of rampant corporate growth with little regulation has done. We have banks engaging in criminal behavior that suck the life out of millions of homeowners with little recourse other than a gracious influx of new, taxpayer supplied, cash. You see, they're 'too big to fail'. The health insurance industry laughs in the face of the Democrats as they lobby and get their piece of the Health Reform pie, leaving only crumbs for the people the law is supposed to help.

The Soviet Union refused to see the changes happening in the 70's and 80's. They held tight to the old Lenin and Stalin bullshit to the very end when the people finally had had enough. Now, the Soviet Union is no more.

Will the Obama administration open its eyes and see which way the wind is blowing or will we have to endure another president who can only see as far as Wall Street?

Aren't we the people too big to fail?

So Mote It Be,
David A.