where’s horton when we need him

Last November 4th, there was literally dancing in the streets. The era of torture and infinite detention without trial and corporate ownership of the government was over. It was our own velvet revolution, and the People had won.

Granted, it was only a single election, and the President can’t change everything. But we did give ourselves majorities in both the House and Senate, too, which left only the Judiciary to begin the long correction necessary in a branch of the government filled with lifetime appointments.

But six months in, Obama is swiftly morphing into Bush in blackface, and the Senate – despite its near supermajority – has proved itself to be as contemptuous of its constituents as Dick Cheney is of anyone not named Dick Cheney.

How do they hate us? Let me count the ways:

• Banks are given trillions to stay in their palaces on Wall Street, rapidly converting their debts to the government into stock in order to launder the red ink out of their balance sheets, while judges overseeing homeowners in bankruptcy don’t even have the option of re-writing loan terms to make mortgage repayment possible.

• The government buys 80% of AIG in order to avoid the domino collapse that would follow its defaulting on trillions in credit default swaps, and pays the same banks who made those bad bets – the same banks who needed TARP bailouts – 100 cents on the dollar with taxpayer funds, while taxpayers suffered the loss of half or more of their retirement investments.

• The TARP program was set up to buy bad assets off the banks that made bad loans, then turned around and instead used that money to directly invest in banks. Those banks then used this taxpayer money to lobby Congress kill cramdown, kill protection for credit card holders, and kill the Employee Free Choice Act – all while calling in loans from credit card holders and ratcheting up interest rates in order to provide profits for their executives and shareholders.

• Banks that took taxpayer TARP money pushed Chrysler into bankruptcy, knowing that their credit default swaps purchased from AIG for milli-cents on the dollar would pay off in full, courtesy again of the U.S. taxpayer, thus assuring the loss of tens of thousands of jobs across the auto and manufacturing sector – jobs held by: U.S. taxpayers.

And this is just the banks. Max Baucus laughed at single-payer advocates as they were arrested and dragged from the health care reform hearings, and a few days later Obama and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius played grab-ass with health insurers and healthcare corporatists (again excluding single-payer advocates), cheering the vampires as they offered to suck us 1.5% less dry over 10 years, which offer will doubtless evaporate once a public option is put on the table.

And now TARP funds are being extended to insurers:

The federal government must have at least some concern that the failure of a major insurance company would set off a cascade of events that could harm the financial and credit markets. In an attempt to prevent this, it has committed $22 billion to the industry.

According to Bloomberg, “Insurers need the money to quell doubts about whether they can pay claims and retirement stipends after falling stock and bond markets depleted capital.” The companies that will get funds include Allstate, Prudential, Hartford, Lincoln Financial, Principal, and Ameriprise.

So the insurers get bailed out with taxpayer money when their stocks tank, but those of us – taxpayers, again – with IRAs and 401(k)s suffering the same “depleted capital” can go fuck ourselves.

But that’s just the crass, materialistic side of things, where taxpayers are getting the shaft. Those of us whose vote was cast hoping for a return to the Constitution, the rule of law, and human rights can go fuck ourselves as well, as campaign promises for transparency, prosecution of torture, and the restoration of habeas corpus turn to dust:

President Barack Obama declared Wednesday he would try to block the court-ordered release of photos that show U.S. troops abusing prisoners.

He said the abrupt reversal of his position came out of concern that the pictures would “further inflame anti-American opinion” and endanger U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These photos are already “out” in the rest of the world; only in the U.S. are we being protected from these horrific images (and we can find them if we are the least bit savvy at navigating the intertubes).

So the only rationale Obama can have is that he wants to avoid an increase in the number of U.S. citizens calling for prosecution of the torturers and their abettors (in the Bush Administration, Congress, etc.).

He wants this issue to go away, so the photos must go away, as well. And so must habeas corpus, the right to a speedy trial, and all of those constitutional niceties that separate us from fascist dictatorships:

President Obama said today he will revive military commissions but with greater legal safeguards for defendants to try some terrorist suspects held at the military base in Cuba.

The decision, which follows an intense internal debate, represents something of a reversal by the president who said during the campaign that military courts martial or the federal courts offered a better route to successful prosecution because he said military commissions had been an “enormous failure.”

In recent weeks, however, the administration appears to have bowed to fears articulated by the Pentagon that bringing some detainees before regular courts presented enormous legal hurdles and could risk acquittals.

Yeah, you risk acquittal WHEN YOU TORTURE PEOPLE.

Obama must be terrified of the political fallout that will come when his Justice Department fails to convict “terrorists.”

PROSECUTE THE TORTURERS. Put the onus where it belongs – on the Bush Administration. Say it plainly: WE CANNOT GET CONVICTIONS BECAUSE BUSH AND CHENEY TORTURED.

I knew Obama was a political animal, an operator – it was one of the reasons he scared me during the primaries.

But I held out some hope after he was elected that the office itself would give him some spine; that being President would give him a firmer hand than he could have among the collegiality über alles atmosphere of the Senate.

All hopes are dashed now. He has not once used the bully pulpit to push the Senate – to shame them – to turn toward their constituents and away from their corporate masters.

We are that little voice inside the dust speck, and Obama should speak for us against those who would boil us in beezle-nut oil.

But he’s just another Wickersham brother after all.