WHY AM I GRUMPY THIS MORNING?

I am feeling rather grumpy this morning. I've had a second cup of tea and it has not helped.

Maybe it is because I read last night that in order to sweeten the pot for the next Obama $33 billion war supplemental to be voted on in the next few weeks the administration is going to stick a $2.8 billion amendment inside the bill for Haiti recovery aid. Talk about cynicism. (That $2.8 billion is the same amount of $$$ the taxpayers of Maine have spent on war since 2001.)

Or maybe I am grumpy because I saw another panicked appeal from the Democrats as they face losing a slew of House and Senate races in November. They are pushing the fear button about the Republicans taking over Congress. Maybe the Democrats should look in the mirror and begin to wonder if they have created this problem for themselves as they have turned into Bush-lite and expanded wars, continued detentions/torture/assassinations, continued the corporate bail-outs, and a whole lot more.

The Dems base is dispirited and angry and is planning to stay home in droves. Why vote for the Dems when in most cases you are just playing a shell game with the peanut under the cup being the corporate domination of the government.

It's pretty hard to honestly evaluate Obama and see much difference between him and the last administration expect for the nice smile and better elocution.

We've now put 900 of the war $$$ door-hangers in Bath and I will put out more on Tuesday. Want to get it up to about 1,200-1,500 distributed in our city. I notice as I go through the working class neighborhoods how depressed so many people look. When I ran into a few folks and handed them the door hangers they had a sad look on their face like "We know this is bad and killing us" but in most cases I think folks have given up faith and their hope that anything can change.

This is where I again blame the Democrats because they have helped increase this sense of despair and resignation among the people who genuinely wanted to believe that Obama and control of the Congress was going to mean something. To me it is one of the biggest political betrayals in American history and that sorry party is going to pay for it in the next couple of years.

UPDATE: A Maine friend sent me this in an email tonight:

I read your blog and I have to say that I felt the same way this morning, grumpy, dispirited. I have another issue to add to your list of Obaminations. The systematic dismantling of public education and the union busting of the administration's Race to the Top school "reform"/funding game.

My concern about the current political climate is the vast number of people still cheerily and blindly lionizing Obama. It is clear that few are paying attention to what is really going on and how they are getting screwed. The Dems have found in Obama the perfect embodiment of their party, lots of empty rhetoric about workers, the environment, peace, health care but still the same corporate state.

Apologies I had to rant, carry on.


A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

The Obama administration is steamrolling the privatization of the U.S. public schools, imposing a corporate model in which there is no place for teachers unions or for “anything resembling community control.” Education chief and Obama buddy Arne Duncan’s public school demolition derby would be denounced by “every progressive force in America” – if he were a Republican.