How can Obama take the oath of office without lying?

[Myra Bronstein]

Scenario 1:

"After President Bush this week asked Congress to release the bank bailout fund's remaining $350 billion, Obama pledged to veto any bill rejecting the request, meaning he is beginning his presidency not by "turn(ing) the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street," as he once pledged. Instead, he is promising a mushroom cloud unless lawmakers let taxpayer cash continue flowing to the biggest of Big Money interests."
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles..._16557.cfm

Then:

"President Barack Obama responded Thursday to a front page story in the New York Times which reported that Wall Street handed out $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year, calling the payments "outrageous"

President Barack Obama issued a withering critique Thursday of Wall Street corporate behavior, calling it "the height of irresponsibility" for employees to be paid more than $18 billion in bonuses last year while their crumbling financial sector received a bailout from taxpayers. "It is shameful," Obama said from the Oval Office. "And part of what we're going to need is for the folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint, and show some discipline, and show some sense of responsibility."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/29...62305.html


Scenario 2:

Quote from the movie Casablanca: "Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"


What do these two scenarios have in common?

[Myra Bronstein]

"Bad

As the Obama administration apparently prepares to launch Hankie Pankie II — buying troubled assets from banks at prices higher than they will fetch on the open market — it occurred to me that an updated version of an old Communist-era joke may be appropriate: under Bush, financial policy consisted of Wall Street types cutting sweet deals, at taxpayer expense, for Wall Street types. Under Obama, it’s precisely the reverse.

Update: Maybe I was too cryptic. The original joke was, “Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Socialism is the reverse.”

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/bad/

[Myra Bronstein]

Long article, pages and pages of accounts of people who committed suicide after being financially destroyed. So I won't quote the whole thing. But here are the final sentences:


"Across the United States, people have been reacting to dire circumstances with extreme acts, including murder, suicide and suicide attempts, self-inflicted injury, bank robberies, flights from the law, and arson, as well as resistance to eviction and armed self-defense. And yet, while various bailout schemes have been introduced and implemented for banks and giant corporations, no significant plans have been outlined or introduced into public debate, let alone implemented by Washington, to take strong measures to combat the dire circumstances affecting ordinary Americans.

There has been next to no talk of debt or mortgage forgiveness, or of an enhanced and massively bulked-up version of the Nixonian guaranteed income plan (which would pay stipends to the neediest), or of buying up and handing over the glut of homes on the market, with adequate fix-up funds, to the homeless, or of any significant gesture toward even the most modest redistributions of wealth. Until then, for many, hope will be nothing but a slogan, the body count will rise, and Americans will undoubtedly continue going to extremes."
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/123563?page=5

[David Guyatt]

Quote from the movie Casablanca: "Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"