Spinning Obama or Obama is Spinning

Obama's deputy press flack says that leftists won't be satisfied unless we have Canadian style health care and abolish the defense department. Let's deconstruct that.

Of course, Canadian style single payer health care would be wonderful, but is that what we are criticizing Obama about? No, we are criticizing him for abandoning leadership entirely on that and many issues. Did Obama acknowledge that single payer is the only solution which addresses our many health care problems and then make concessions to get a bill which would pass? That is leadership. No, he eliminated single payer and single payer advocates from the discourse at the outset. The result, a health care bill that Rep. John Conyers called "a piece of crap." The health care industry loves it.

Let's ignore the straw man of abolishing the defense department and look at the real issues. Leftists want Obama to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, he has mired us more deeply in Iraq and is pursuing an insane, psychotic (in the sense that it is totally out of touch with reality) program in Afghanistan.

In fact, on both wars, Obama is continuing Bush's manic policies without significant modifications. Ironically, if the Republicans attack Obama for endangering national security, they will be right since Bush and Reagan were the biggest producers of national insecurity we have yet seen.

Of course, it goes way beyond the two distorted issues Obama's flack raised. Policy toward Israel has not changed one iota. The focus on Iran, which is hardly a credible threat to anyone, is a cruel joke. Obama put finance capital in charge of his economic policies, and the rest of us are paying the price. It really is a case of the same sour wine in new bottles with different labels.

But let's be clear on one point. I am not disappointed. Obama is exactly as awful a president as I predicted he would be, which is why I didn't vote for him. That is my no-spin opinion.