Dec 11 2010

David Sirota’s Distant Early Warning About Obama

David Sirota

As far as I know, the very first writer who really nailed Obama was David Sirota, in October, 2007, when he was virtually the only reporter who picked up an item from MSNBC about Obama endorsing FTA-Peru, even though 4,000,000 Peruvian farmers and workers had gone out on a general strike against it, and the “labor and environmental standards” which Obama celebrated were obviously bogus.

And Sirota also reminded dozing progressives and liberals that Obama had been “the keynote speaker at the launch of the Hamilton Project — a Wall Street front group working to drive a wedge between Democrats and organized labor on globalization issues.”

So David Sirota did his due diligence, while the rest of the media recited horse-race trivia from the polls, and here we are.

 

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  1. When this thing came up for a vote in December, 2007, Obama didn’t bother to show up for it, maybe because he was too busy campaigning or because there were obviously enough votes to pass it without him, 77-18, with the usual small minority of decent human beings in the Senate voting against it: Feingold, Leahy, Bernie Sanders, Debbie Stabenow, and even Harry Reid.

  2. I can’t recall much mention of these concerns about Obama and/or Hillary.  

    In my pre-DD days, I did place the following comment on HuffPo, on January 7, 2008…

    Both Hillary and Obama have already sold their souls to the megacorporate king/queen makers, however, a couple of questions for their supporters:

    1) Can you name any substantive or ground-breaking legislation that bears their name (e.g., McCain-Feingold) or any time that either of them took the lead in making a principled stand on an issue (such as Wellstone, Feingold, Kucinich, Wexler)?

    2) Obama’s voting record is less than stellar (missing 85 of the past 100 Senate votes). See for yourself at http://obama.senate.gov/votes/…

    3) Hillary’s voting record does not appear to be available on her website (as is Obama’s).

    4) Obama advanced the idea of unilaterally invading Pakistan if it was believed that Al Qaeda targets were hiding there, as evidenced by his statement on or about August 1, 2007, “If we have actionable intelligence on al Qaeda operatives, including [Osama] bin Laden, and President Musharraf cannot act, then we should…That’s just common sense.”

    5) Obama voted with Bush on several measures such as the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (making it more difficult for plaintiffs who are harmed to seek redress in court); the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (providing additional tax breaks and incentives to Big Oil); renewal of the PATRIOT Act; the Secure Fence Act (to build 700 mile long double fence along U.S./Mexican border); did not vote on a Senate measure opposing Alberto Gonzales; did not vote on a measure to implement recommendations of the 9/11 Commission; and voted for the Oman Free Trade Agreement (similar to NAFTA and CAFTA). He, along with Hillary, supported the Peru Free Trade agreement, furthering the damage already caused by earlier similar legislation (more of Ross Perot’s predicted “giant sucking sounds”).

    6) Supporters have allowed both Hillary and Obama to constantly repeat the mantra of “change”, while minimally defining what they mean specifically by “change.” Recall that George W. Bush, promised change as well –and he did bring about change — he just didn’t say what kind of change he meant.

    I think my predictions turned out to be mostly accurate, however, I would much rather have been flat mistaken.

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