i am late in posting this, but finally will steal a few minutes. i want to apologize to all who predicted what we would get from a president obama. this has been an appalling disappointment. i argued with many in his defense, or should i say in defense of expectations that once seemed possible, and i apologize. the naysayers were correct. i can't say that i partook of the hopium, but i dared to think it could be different, that this administration would take the necessary steps. sadly, profoundly disappointed.

aside from this brief apology, i hope all is well with everyone still reading and posting here.

Conchita-

I would have far preferred you to have been right, and naysayers like me to have been wrong. The world sure would be better.

Unfortunately empire is as empire does... I think Yoda said that.

DaveS

For those who wanted a CD or whatever, the whiskey bar is available on the wayback machine:

http://tinyurl.com/yaxah74

Conchita, yeah it is too sad. One president is much like another.

hi conchita!

speaking only for myself, no apologies necessary to anyone - your expressed position at the time was genuine, unlike a few other moa commentators (esp waldo). we live and (ideally) learn from our experiences.

(if anything, i still feel malooga owes you an apology for being too harsh on you personally on more than one occasion. it's not an approach that wins over the target, or others, even if the general analysis was on the mark)

---

wrt the wayback machine & billmon

Montague joins firm

Hi Conchita,

With you posting again, biklett, rick, maxcrat, rudolf, jonku and all the others leaving comments, this place starts to feel a lil bit like the ol Moon. So its simply good to see ya, don't worry about what was said about Obama. I think everybody was let down by the man, even those who didn't have a great deal of expectations in the first place.

I look forward to many more of your contributions, as I do agree with b real, your posts are at least always of a friendly and polite nature.

watching the SOTU the other night and listening to those tired old republican talking points, such as new nuclear power plants, clean coal, more off shore drilling, tax cuts, budget cuts for everything except defense, joe biden promising billions more for nuclear weapons, more sanctions on Iran, and of course no healthcare, it is enough to make you scream.

Obama will do what all those republican blowhards like limbaugh and hannity only fantasized....the complete destruction of the democratic party. why anyone would bother voting for this collection of boobs is incomprehensible.

need to start now on a third party, might be able to get enough congressmen elected to make them needed partners. then we could finally have an opposition party.

there was no need to apologize Conchita. I would like to see Waldo carry his tired ass in here and have the decency to say he was wrong. jony b cool was quite adamant too and he has similarly disappeared.

I hope you are well.

dan

http://www.counterpunch.com/bageant01292010.html

I know we have butted heads a few times Conchita, however, as others have sd, there is no need of apologies. I too had wished very much that you'd been right. And I do not have any feelings of Scheherazade what so ever, only a heavy sadness.

Thanks for checking in, well wishes to you and yours.

Hope you are doing well. I agree with the others, nothing to apologize for.

My biggest disappointments have been the failure to reject the many actions and positions the former Administration took that undermine constitutional principles and civil liberties, and the failure to put solid banking and financial institution reforms in place. Those are two areas where I started out thinking the new administration might have the desire, brains, and backbone to make a huge difference for our future.

I couldn't watch the SOTU. I never can. Some years I start out but end up shouting at the tv within the first few minutes and just have to turn it off. (But Catlady - thanks for Joe Bageant's annotated version!)

as a cynic on the side of cynicism i think i can say we played our roles and said our part not to be right but to prepare whoever would listen for this predictable disappointment.

my wife would like to think obama is a good person, and maybe he is. others would prefer to depict our prez as a prisoner of the system that selected him. as far as i'm concerned, if bush can be accurately described as a war criminal, then so can obama.

i sort of forgot how contentious those conversations @ MoA were, regarding obama. i remember in particular arguing with annie, realizing that the age difference between us was a major factor in our respective response to the successful candidacy of an african american man. cynics like myself were suppose to shut up and acknowledge how far we had come as a society, and to a certain degree that's true. but now, in the face of crushing disillusionment, that supposed cultural progress seems hollow.

juan moment in another thread echoed blackie, saying essentially any new movement must be explicitly oppositional, and that this opposition must come to the table armed with alternatives. simply bitching from the sidelines is a waste of time. and i agree.

the problem, as has been described, is that any movement that gathers any national steam, gets immediately absorbed and neutralized. that is one reason i have no faith that any national movement is possible, or even desirable.

DIY efforts to build local networks should be the focus. if they can plug in to efforts in other near localities, then great. but when it comes to attention, fuck the national lens. as the conditioned plebe-whores claw each other ragged for reality show ratings, the preservation of locality requires shunning the national spotlight.

it's like the borg (from star trek) say and the elites hope you believe through their various avenues of control and coercion:

resistance is futile

but it's not and they know it, and we should too.

one thing that surprises me is how little the obama admin did to distance itself from its predecessor

he now owns all of those policies - bailout, extrajudicial assassination programs, the self-ceded right to wage the preemptive war on terror anywhere in the world, gitmo, legalizing torture & denying legal rights to anyone deemed 'enemy combatants', and so on

all his

and people have such short memories in this country of historical amnesia that, if it hasn't happened already, eventually it'll no longer matter who sat in the oval office before him

A tip of the hat to conchita. Likewise I'm glad to see familiar faces here in the bar. I know I've been awfully quiet recently. But I've been reading here rather than commenting because it's been harder for me to write anything. It's the blues I guess that has left me speechless. The Cheshire grins of Justice Roberts and Alito, as they have handed the country over to unchecked corporate money, has been one more body blow to the Republic.

The disappointment Obama has left after almost a year in office is pretty hard to absorb. So many Americans have thought of Obama as perhaps our last shot at undoing the damage to law, to basic decency, to democracy that was inflicted on the country by the lawless Bush administration. But the whole government is wormy with corruption and addicted to "the sin of war" as Chris Hedges puts it. It's just so sad.

sounding like the dfh i am. so nice to hear from everyone! i had no idea there were so many of us lurking. this is a good sign. has anyone heard from bernhard at all? i suspect he has made a clean break, but maybe he will surprise us someday. i remember talking with him once and he described himself as someone who walks away from things when they are over. i hope he has moved on to real life pleasures. i also wonder about hamburger as i have not seen a post here and an email sent around the holidays was returned undeliverable.

not sure where to begin to respond. the sotu, i guess. i listened while working, first time in years. to me they are nearly always little more than rhetoric and pr opportunities. much of his newly pugnaciousness towards the repubs was made at dkos, but an equal number would prefer less talk more action. he has certainly bungled the first year. hopefully mass and oregon have awakened him and others from their complacency. i thought he did a commendable job today rebutting republican talking points and it was good to see some fight in the man, but until some kind of significant hcr is passed, prosecution of bybee/yoo/cheney/bush/etc. begins, guantanamo closed, innocents freed, fair trials given to all, torture stopped, drone attacks stopped, assassinations stopped, real progress made towards green energy, the ratio of military to domestic funding upended, etc. and etc., it is all still rhetoric. yep, time for a third party. in the meantime, i keep pushing the progressives in the house. looks like they stand to make some headway on hcr. it will be amazing if we do see some kind of populist victory here, but i am not holding my breath given the history of this country and how deeply entrenched the mic has been since the beginnings of imperialism.

dan, is there a winnebago parked in your driveway? did you win the contest? what a great afternoon that was with your daughter and beq and the maxcrat's special tour! for others reading, dan flew into dc for a weekend with his daughter and she was kind enough to share him with beq, maxcrat, and me. we had a delicious lunch at clydes and then headed out to the lincoln monument, a tour of the wh, a quick run through the corcoran (excellent maya lin show), some beers and laughs with a group of softball players who were more than likely republicans, and then it was back to nyc for me. when's the next visit?

now that i know there are mooners about, i'll stop by here more often. i'm in my last semester of school and don't have as much time as i used to have to spend on line, but it feels like coming home to see all these posts. i wish i had more to offer in the way of substantive posts, but with school i am not able to keep up on much more than domestic stuff and hcr has been all consuming. did tony bliar (perdebs is dead) testify today or is it this coming week? am very curious to see if the brits are able to get to the truth. the 70 year seal on the murder of david kelly is nearly as revealing as access to the records would be.

brilliant as usual. catlady, thanks so much for posting. that is one to share.

Thanks for the invite in my email conchita.

It is good to "see" all of you. Never one to have anything enlightening to say...I soon lost hope but still am glad of the fact that he made it to the wh and I don't have to listen to McCain mumble and Palen screech and see them strutting around as if validated.

I'll never forget the sense of community that annie and I experienced as we worked together in a city that still remembers the civil war as if it was only yesterday. Good memories for me.

than never tried at all.

beQ, my hat is off to you and annie because you have been on the front line, beating your drum, making signs, going to Gaza, and a host of other things that take courage and time.

the rest of us spend a lot of time complaining to each other. that is comforting in an odd sort of way but is not really very effective if we want to bring about change.

and Conchita, no I didn't win the camper though the picture with Einstein should have been a sure thing. I will be in NYC the end of May for my daughter's graduation. I do hope to see you then.

is he DOES have the desire to shift momentum and is going along with the program so as to expose the depth of corruption. i must remain at least minimally open to that possibility for mental health reasons

even though he's doing his best to continue the policies of empire, i must remind myself there are still darkly malignant forces who will use the political prominence of this intelligent man of african descent to bring all the brutally violent racism to the surface, to emphasize race and strengthen divisions among a generally dazed, compliant citizenry.

to add a touch of paranoia to the mix, i feel compelled to mention that i've noticed in my virtual travels the thwarted coup against FDR has been popping up a lot lately. i also strongly suspect the underwear bomber was allowed passage as a political attack against the sitting administration to, you know, keep the "house negro" firmly under thumb.

or this could all be just symptoms of brawling banking giants morgan chase vs. golden sacks fighting it out.

good to see everyone. needless to say i am massively disappointed. my optimism kept me afloat for awhile but that's sort of petered out at this point. to be honest i'm not thinking much about our domestic scene and have recalled uncle's sentiment years ago..something about 'bring it on'. the supreme court's latest nail in the coffin...no, i didn't watch the state of the union, i wasn't in the mood to cringe. thinking about the week i spent campaigning w/beq brings nothing but warmth to my heart for too many reasons to recount and for this i have no regrets.

my biggest disappointment is the middle east and africa. as bad off as we are here in the US we aren't in cages like palestine and we don't have to fear getting bombed in our beds at 3 am. i really though obama was going to show some balls wrt israel but all that hope is just shrunk to nada. my faith remains w/the masses.. that people will become more aware of themselves as part of a global community. that what can happen to any of us can happen to us all at some point down the line. this is why i keep speaking out against the machine..

thanks for your email conchita. i have some urgent chores this morning but i'll be back.

so good to see you all.

Didn’t watch the SOTU.

But did this short clip, which shows Barry responding to a student (?) question about Israel and human rights: (5 mins)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_N5MiM3lyA

He says, right at the start:

The middle east is an issue that has plagued the region for centuries

(huh? sounds like Bush confusion)

then, following straight on:

Israel is one of our strongest allies,

immediately justified by:

It is a vibrant democracy

These are the boiler-plate talking points. The word ‘vibrant’ is a pointed cue. (He goes on to waffle about a two-state solution and legitimate aspirations, etc.)

The vid shows that he was caught short, needed time, was embarrassed and awkward, before getting into stride, to manage -clumsily- skipping answering the question.

O-Man-Bam’s past testifies to his adherence to the Palestinian cause.

Today, he is a servant of the PTB and has to spout the line, talk the talk, and not hesitate.

How exactly does that work?

Bush was very much the same.

Hi conchita and a big hi to the gang, most of whom I have pissed off royally over the years, but whose opinions I value. Its summer here, as weird as summers seem to be nowadays (I am living in a cooler, more arid part of NZ, but this summer has been hot, wet and sticky - the hot and wet part I used to live in has been hot and dry as the proverbial dead dingo's donger)consequently we have been at the beach mostly this month or last month whatever.
It is great to see the old names and nyms and POVs appearing. Must be winter eh! everyone inside huddled over their keyboards lol.
Conchita as everyone else has said there is nothing to apologise for. This was never about "you're wrong, I win", or "See I told you so".
Somewhere in a part of me where a tiny spark of optimism still flickers I sorta hoped that the continual barrage of revelations about dem party, clintonistas and oblamblamites deceit might inspire some amerikans to get serious about a new political force. A new party built around the new congruencies of amerikans.
Trying to build a humanist party using the same old structures as the dems would be pointless and frustrating, and would require the one resource that ordinary humans can never beat the crooks, corporatists, and capitalists on -money.

But beginning a political movement outta the virtual edifices constructed in the nineties and noughties would be do-able.
The hack parties still regard those forms as adjuncts to the 'real thing'. On nomination Oblamblam didn't hit the cloud, he hit the zionist lobby national conference, in obeisance. As much as he claims to be a new pol he is just an old pol like all the other creeps who went before.

Anyway once again a simple 'Hi no need to apoligise' has turned into a fucking treatise, sorry bout that.
But maybe this time amerikans will take the idea of using their political nous creatively to intelligently engineer a way though this mess a bit more seriously. The current reality is pretty damn stark.