The Barack and Hillary Show Plays Selma

Tweet Portions of an article showing that the bankruptcy of the Democratic candidates' programs is matched by their phoney rrhetoric. Whole article at link.

"The double-church drive-by in Selma, Alabama showed the utter vapidity and lack of substance of the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns. As the corporate media checked their applause meters and "Amen" counters, both corporatist candidates plied the Black congregations with false-folksy nonsense and self-congratulatory exultations - avoiding at all cost any hint of challenge to American ruling structures. If the Bloody Sunday commemoration is any indication, the Black Freedom Movement ends with, not a whimper, but hollow bombast and impotence.

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"Settled in, Obama urges young Blacks to "recognize their history.... I worry sometimes that the Joshua generation forgets where it came from...." They want to "get some of that Oprah money." Everyone laughs. Obama flashes his famous smile, knowing that he has become a master of the political uses of money. The Senator's Hope Fund Political Action Committee has helped bankroll 18 fellow Democratic colleagues, most of them members of the corporatist DLC, an organization founded in the 1980s by white southern politicians fearing the regional party was becoming too Black - including, most prominently, then Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, who accompanied his wife to Selma.

"Obama not only knows money, he serves it. Among his first votes in the Senate was to limit citizens' access to state courts in suits against giant corporations. He and the bill's Republican sponsors called it Tort Reform, when in reality the measure abridges fundamental civil rights. This, from a former professor of constitutional law, who seldom corrects folks who mistakenly call him a "civil rights lawyer."

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"Had Clinton explained her position on ending the war in Iraq, it would have become plain that she has no intention of doing so, and has until recently sometimes sounded more gung-ho on "victory" than the Bush regime. Obama is no better: a class-A imperialist who complained that the U.S. was "coddling" Iraqis (half a million "coddled" to death, so far); would give Bush until March 31, 2008 to withdraw "combat" troops (as so designated by the Pentagon); and would maintain U.S. bases in Iraq thereafter if "the Iraqis" request it (there will always be an Iraqi faction eager to "host" the U.S. military for billions of dollars in bribes).

The Black Agenda Report via Cursor.org