Sarah Meyer

With Bush, we had sentimental creepiness & neo-con lies; with Obama we have rhetorical hypocrisy. With many appointments now made, we can see that Obama is indeed trying to please the “48% that didn’t vote for me.” To complete his team, he might as well nominate Cheney as head of Homeland Security and Sarah Palin (with bear rugs) as Secretary of Agriculture. To placate the disgruntled anti-war movement, he could then ask “progressive” power-happy HuffPo Arianna Huffington [ “I only text three people – my two teenage children and Barack Obama.”] to be his press secretary.

Following are some comments from The Disappointed and Angry. These articles represent the 53% of the US public that voted for Obama, hope and "CHANGE."

Obama's Foreign Policy: The Case for Pessimism
24.11.08. Justin Raimondo, global research. The new president's appointments resound like slaps in the faces of his liberal supporters / In that alternate universe, where up is down and black is white, it makes perfect "sense" for a president to appoint people to key posts who oppose his policies. In our own world, however, such an approach would be crazy – yet it seems to be happening right before our eyes.

Obama Plans to Retain Gates at Defense Department
25.11.08. P. Baker, T. Shanker, NY Times. In deciding to ask Mr. Gates to stay, Mr. Obama put aside concerns that he would send a jarring signal after a political campaign in which he made opposition to the war his signature issue in the early days. Some Democrats who have advised his campaign quietly complained that he was undercutting his own message and risked alienating war critics who formed his initial base of support, especially after tapping his primary rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, for secretary of state.

Obama's Treasury Pick Has All the Wrong Ideas
25.11.08. William Greider, The Nation/alternet. Timothy Geithner is an architect, and now an enabler, of the unfolding crisis.

Obama appointees signal continuing aggression and war
26.11.08. WSWS. Barack Obama’s vague campaign promises of “change” are rapidly evaporating as the key positions in the next administration are filled with veterans of the US political establishment. Far from ending war abroad and social reaction at home, Obama’s choices underline the essential continuity with the policies of the Bush administration.

Watch out for Obama's Team Selling Conservative Policies as Progressive Politics
26.11.08. David Sirota, Open Left / Alternet. Obama's early list of names for his staff doesn't bode well for all the progressive policy promises Obama made during the campaign.

Starving for Change
24.11.08. Chris Hedges, Truthdig. The swelling numbers waiting outside homeless shelters and food pantries around the country have grown by at least 30 percent since the summer. If Barack Obama continues to turn to the elites who created the mess, if he does not radically redirect the nation’s resources to assist the working class and the poor, we will become a third-world country.

Obama Chooses Wall Street Over Main Street
25.11.08. Robert Sheer, Truth Dig. Why then has he appointed the very people responsible for this disaster to now make it all better? Why not ask him? Heck, yes, it is time for the many of us who responded to his e-mails during the campaign to now challenge our e-mail buddy as to why he suddenly acts as if the interests of Wall Street and Main Street are one and the same.

You ain’t seen nothing yet
26.11.08. Mike Whitney, Peoples Voice. Obama hasn’t even been sworn in yet, and already the Wall Street cheerleaders are celebrating his first great triumph. According the pundits, the stock market staged a surprise 494 point rally last Friday because -- get this -- it was announced that Timothy Geithner would be appointed Obama’s Treasury Secretary.

Some people still hope

Obama's choice of a team of rivals says much about the president he will be
26.11.08. Jonathan Freedland, Guardian. We're still waiting for change because Obama is not yet president. George Bush is still in the White House and will remain there for nearly 60 more days. / ... Obama understands that servants need not be identical to their master, so long as they can implement his will. / ... More widely, the incoming president is betting that he can still cast himself as the new broom come to sweep out the Augean stables, even when he's surrounded by a team of Washington insiders. . So he has turned to the former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, a Capitol Hill fixture, to reform healthcare. / .. The true believers on the liberal left/ ... are enraged by the proliferation of ex-Clintonites in the incoming administration ... / But this concern probably rests on a misreading of the way Obama sees his cabinet and circle of advisers. His longtime strategist David Axelrod gave the clearest clue at the weekend, when he said: "He's not looking for people to give him a vision. He's going to put together an administration of people who can effectuate his vision." In other words, he's not hiring Daschle or Summers or Clinton for their ideological colour. He's hiring them as political professionals who will take a brief - ultimately authored by him - and get the job done. / Perhaps that is a gamble on Obama's part, to imagine he can construct a progressive administration staffed by those in the centre and even on the centre-right. / ... The traditional reading of this would be as a sign of weakness, suggesting Obama feels compelled - New Labour style - to keep right-leaning opinion on board. But it could just as easily be read as evidence of tremendous confidence: that he is sure enough in his own convictions to be surrounded by those who are far from nodding yes men. / ... The Hillary nomination is the one that gives me pause. But the other signs are encouraging. The only real criticism of Obama's presidency? That it hasn't started yet.

I do not have such hope as Mr. Freedland.

IF YOU WANT TO TELL PRESIDENT ELECT OBAMA HOW YOU FEEL, CLICK HERE

VIDEOS:

Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill (Miami Book Fair)

Obama Introduces his economic team

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REFERENCE:

Who Is The President Elect - Obama or AIPAC? (10.11.08)

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Sarah Meyer is an independent researcher living in the UK.

The url for Obama: “Seamless" President Elect” is: http://indexresearch.blogspot.com/2008/11/obama-our-seamless-president-elect.html

The shorter url is: http://tinyurl.com/5qfd9n