Gitzo UH wrote:
Looks like the rats are finally waking up and jumping off the ship !
Writing a recent column for The Guardian, journalism professor and prominent Democrat Jeff Jarvis took President Barack Obama to task for betraying those who voted for him with unConstitutional policies.
Jarviss column begins:
What are you thinking, Mr President?
Is this really the legacy you want for yourself: the chief executive who trampled rights, destroyed privacy, heightened secrecy, ruined trust, and worst of all, did not defend but instead detoured around so many of the fundamental principles on which this country is founded?
And I voted for you. Ill confess you were a second choice. I supported Hillary Clinton first. I said at the time that your rhetoric about change was empty and that I feared you would be another Jimmy Carter: aggressively ineffectual.
Never did I imagine that you would instead become another Richard Nixon: imperial, secretive, vindictive, untrustworthy, inexplicable.
The professor, whose bio flaunts an impressive list of media career accomplishments, goes on to express his disdain for the Presidents policies from the perspective of 9/11 survivor, journalist, American citizen, Internet user and Democrat.
He writes:
I do care about security. I survived the attack on the World Trade Center and I believe 9/11 was allowed to occur through a failure of intelligence. I thank TSA agents for searching me: applause for security theater. I defend governments necessary secrets
As a journalist, I am frightened by your vengeful attacks on whistleblowers Manning, Assange, Snowden, and the rest and the impact in turn on journalism and its tasks of keeping a watchful eye on you and helping to assure an informed citizenry.
As a citizen, I am disgusted by the systematic evasion of oversight you have supported through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts; by the use of ports as lawless zones where your agents can harass anyone; by your failure on your promise to close Guantánamo, and this list could go on.
As an American often abroad, I am embarrassed by the damage you have caused to our reputation and to others trust in us. I find myself apologizing for what you are doing to citizens of other nations, dismissing the idea that they have rights to privacy because they are foreign.
As an internet user, I am most fearful of the impact of your wanton destruction of privacy and the resulting collapse of trust in the net and what that will do to the freedom we have enjoyed in it as well as the business and jobs that are being built atop it.
And as a Democrat, I worry that you are losing us the next election, handing an issue to the Republicans that should have been ours: protecting the rights of citizens against the overreach of the security state.
The author goes on to suggest a num
ber of ways that the President could go about regaining the trust of some of his former supporters. Read the full piece here.
Jarvis is one of many Democrats and American liberals who have lost faith in President Obamas promise of hope and change in America under his Administration.
In a recent interview with Democracy Now, influential polemicist and MIT professor Noam Chomsky said Sarah Palin was right about Barack Obama: There was no substance to his Presidential campaign.
I dont usually admire Sarah Palin, but when she was making fun of this hopey changey stuff, she was right; there was nothing there, Chomsky said. And it was understood by the people who run the political system, and so its no great secret that the US electoral system is mainly a public relations extravaganza
its sort of a marketing affair.
Culture critic, author and self-proclaimed eternal optimist for old school liberalism Camille Paglia penned a recent column similar in tone to Jarviss for Salon. In her piece she took Obama and Hillary Clinton to task for the Benghazi fiasco.
Looks like the rats are finally waking up and jump... (
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What I find humorous about this is when you read his entire Guardian article its clear he condemns Obama's behavior, implying he is becoming more right wing, and abandoning liberal principles. Maybe you should be supporting Obama!