By BENJIE OLIVEROS Bulatlat.com He took America by storm. His eloquence fired up the imagination of the American people. People volunteered in droves to oil his campaign machinery. His promise of change gave hope to the war-weary, economically-battered ordinary American. The economic crisis that hit the US and the world at that time gave a…
Tags: Barack Obama
Benjie Oliveros | The crisis fix
By BENJIE OLIVEROS Bulatlat.com In 2008, when the economic crisis hit the US, newly elected President Barack Obama unveiled a stimulus package that bailed out the erstwhile “too big to fall” financial investment houses and banks. This went on for years with the US government implementing two rounds of quantitative easing measures. But these have…
Why Washington Never Understood Egypt’s Revolution
By GRAHAM USHER CounterPunch Barack Obama praised the Egyptian revolution with his usual eloquence. “Egyptians have made it clear that nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day,” he said. “It was the moral force of nonviolence — not terrorism, not mindless killing — that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.”…
Obama’s Budget: Freezing the Poor
By AMY GOODMAN Reader Supported News | Truthdig President Barack Obama unleashed his proposed 2012 budget this week, pronouncing, proudly: “I’ve called for a freeze on annual domestic spending over the next five years. This freeze would cut the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, bringing this kind of spending—domestic discretionary…
Obama’s Bad Deal With the Chamber of Commerce
By ROBERT REICH Robert Reich’s Blog | Reader Supported News Posted by Bulatlat.com “We can, and we must, work together,” the President told the US Chamber of Commerce today. “Whatever differences we may have, I know that all of us share a deep, abiding belief in this country, a belief in our people, a belief…
The Arab World Shakes: Is the US on Solid Ground?
By JAMES R. KING CounterPunch Posted by Bulatlat.com The dramatic scenes from Tunis, Sana’a and especially Cairo continue to exhilarate observers across the globe. These images of men, women and children braving riot police, tear gas and decades of authoritarianism to seize their economic, social and political futures point to what seemed impossible a mere…
Benjie Oliveros | The Rhetoric of Change of the Obama Administration Unmasked
The American people are disappointed over US Pres. Obama’s performance. The magic of his rhetoric is failing amid the worsening poverty and the essentially unchanged policies. By BENJIE OLIVEROS Analysis Bulatlat.com US President Barack Obama brought hope to the American people amid the deep economic crisis confronting what is supposedly the biggest and strongest nation…
Bitten by History: From the Gulf to Gaza and Afghanistan, the Familiar Way Proves the Wrong Way
By TOM ENGELHARDT Posted by Bulatlat.com History, or the future (however you want to look at it), has a funny way of rearing up and biting leaders who think they know what they’re doing. Take Barack Obama. Only weeks before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, he made a “pragmatic”…
Exposing and Resisting Empire and War Media in the Age of Obama
By Paul Street Z Net International Posted by Bulatlat.com We are today* one week and two days out from the forty-second anniversary of the execution of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a killing that took place exactly one year – almost down to the hour – after his famous “Break the Silence” speech against the…
Feelin’ Alright
By WILLIAM RIVERS PITT Truthout International Posted by Bulatlat.com Seems I’ve got to have a change of scene ‘Cause every night I have the strangest dream Imprisoned by the way it could’ve been Left here on my own So it seems I’ve got to leave before I start to scream But someone locked the door…
War Cries from a Defeated Man
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN CounterPunch International Ritual trumphalism about America’s righteous mission in the closing sentences of his speech did not dispel the distinct impression during President Obama’s 33-minute address to cadets at West Point Tuesday night that we were listening to a man defeated by the challenge of justifying the dispatch of 3o,000 more troops…