Junkies Lament - A Common Disaster

The American electorate has been force-fed a lobotomizing opiate by its ruling political parties. The drug, a seemingly innocent message, administered repeatedly until independent thought beyond proscribed parameters is not tolerated:

A vote outside the two-party structure is wasted.

The addict recoils when they are told that their diseased mind survives based solely on a narcotic vision, and that the same distorted perceptions that prop them up will blind them to the tools necessary for their continued survival.

“Everything is fine,” the junky says. “Just going through a few tough spots. Got it all under control.”
 
Really? Then since everything is solid in your world, you won’t mind if I share some “visions” from outside the cocoon of your Democratic Party?

“A candle burning for everything I ever wanted”

Sgt. Joe Altmann

Sergeant Joe Altmann of Marshfield, WI was killed in Afghanistan on Christmas Day.  The Army medic, who was on his first tour in Afghanistan after having served two tours in Iraq, had turned 27 only ten days earlier, and was married ten months ago.  His mother, Janice Altmann, said the family was “devastated”.

Altmann is the tenth Wisconsin resident to die while serving in Afghanistan in 2011, the tenth anniversary of the war.

“A tattoo burned for everything I've ever wanted and lost”

Should a free trade pact be signed with Korea, “which will destroy 159,000 U.S. jobs,” asked AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka - or with Colombia, “where 51 trade unionists were assassinated last year,” and with Panama, “a country that routinely tramples workers’ rights and shelters money launderers and corporate tax dodgers?”

President Obama signed the free trade deals, first negotiated under George Bush, in October.  Obama, who had highlighted free trade risks to the environment and worker’s rights during his 2008 campaign, chose to disregard those concerns in 2011. 

“I had a long list of names that I kept in my back pocket”

Summers

Larry Summers, the misogynistic former Harvard University President, is one of many Wall Street economic advisors that Obama has relied upon to right the American economy. Summers, an avowed acolyte of libertarian economist Milton Friedman, destroyed efforts to regulate derivatives as a member of the Clinton administration. These unregulated casino-style financial instruments ultimately fueled the 2008 destruction of the US economy.  

Geithner

Timothy Geithner, Obama’s tax evading Treasury Secretary, used his previous position on the New York Federal Reserve to guarantee banks receive face value for derivatives contracts that were worth substantially less - all on the taxpayer’s dime, utilizing federally funded TARP money. 

Daly

William Daley, a politically connected financier, was delivered from JP Morgan Chase Bank to the Obama administration in 2011, as its newest Chief of Staff. Was it merely coincidence that an executive from America’s largest bank was selected to run Obama’s White House the year before the 2012 election?

Consider this: in 2008 Barack Obama raised more campaign funds from the finance, insurance and real estate sectors than any previous presidential candidate. Yes, that includes George W multi-millionaires-are-“my base” Bush.

"But I've cut it down to one and your name's at the top”

The number of American troops killed in Afghanistan has tripled in the less than three years that Obama has led the war – a conflict begun by George Bush ten years ago. The number of Afghan civilian casualties has risen by 19 percent under Obama’s leadership.

Obama’s secret “drone wars” have killed as many as 2,250 people in Pakistan alone, and scores more in Yeman and Somalia.

Obama job czar, GE CEO Jeff Immelt, announced in July that GE Healthcare headquarters would move from Waukesha, WI to China as part of its plan to invest $2 Billion dollars in China.   

“Not to worry too much about the happily-ever-after”

Wisconsin progressives, union members, and freedom of assembly activists learned, in the cold Wisconsin winter, that Obama’s campaign rhetoric is forgotten when they most need his help.

"If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I'm in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I'll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America. Because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner."

When Obama was unable to find his comfy shoes, or the 100,000 plus Wisconsin workers and families rallying for their rights on the Capitol Square, he showed that he stood with corporate supporters of a Governor who bragged that he "dropped a bomb" on Wisconsin.

“Just keep the Caddy moving 'til we're well beyond that hill”

Obama understands dropping bombs on civilians. His Central Intelligence Agency drops them abroad – and his Wall Street backed policies drop them just as assuredly as does Scott Walker, within our domestic borders: on working families, on union members, and on civil libertarians.  

“Won't you share a common disaster?”

Obama backers tell leftists who don’t rally around the President, that support for a third party that takes into account workers, the environment, and peace, will weaken the Democratic Party and send the country careening to the right.

These arguments sound like those from another junky, Amy Winehouse, which she made for not going to rehab. Her drug and alcohol addled mind made her hang on to what she had, including her thinking, as diseased as it was, no matter the consequences to her health.

Maybe Amy Winehouse never had a chance with her disease.     

We should not subject any more Joe Altmann’s to ours.