Next Revolution: The Second American Revolution

A series of domestic and international crisis challenge the incoming Obama Administration. These challenges we face are the products of domestic political corruption, and resulted in the failed economy, failed foreign policies, and corrupted domestic polity we are experiencing.

Obama is taking leadership of a government that just seen serious crimes committed against its own Constitution as well as International law by the Executive Branch. Ominiously, Congress passed many unConstitutional laws attempting to cover Bush's crimes both before and after the Dems took control of the House. 
 
Obama was elected on some vague promise of change, when in fact he rode to victory on the crest of a broad social wave of repudiation of everything about bush.

Obama's answer was to promise to change everything. This worked well, though It appears that a vast majority of citizens would have elected anybody to replace Bush. The irony is that Obama is a product of exactly the same vast system of open bribery that funded bush and funds both parties.

In reality we have a man who became President exactly the same way Bush did: by sucessfully collecting massive bribes from the very same people that operate the very same system of open bribery that crafted the criminally corrupt laws and policies that Bush and Obama both claimed they would change.  

To be fair, we can only judge Obama on how he approachs each of these crisis. But the big money that was given to Obama says that Obama will use our military and diplomatic power to pursue the exactly same strategic goals as Bush: protecting the global interests of our corporate state, which happen to be the same interests that funded Obama and Bush's campaigns. In any case, the instability of the global situation will not allow Obama rest. His actions as president will tell us if his words as candidate were more than empty lies.
 
On the domestic front the number one issue for Obama is the economic/financial meltdown, This downturn  is picking up speed every day. Almost off the radar of the public and press is the disposition of the criminal presidential powers that the Bush Admin claimed and used.  

On the international front, there are a series of crisis that plumb every kind of potiential instability and danger on every continent.

Two failed wars have destabilized the Middle-east and South Asia. A strong potiential exists that a a Sunni-Shite contest for power in Iraq could spark a regional war in the Middle-East. Potiential for a nuclear war exists between India and Pakistan. South America has slipped from American economic and diplomatic domination.

China dominates Asia, and is expanding its global diplomatic, economic and military reach.

Chaos dominates Africa, with the potiential for state failure streaching from Egypt to South Africa.

Russia has risen as a global energy giant, and has been provoked into rebuilding their military power. Russia has restarted their strrategic  nuclear air patrols, is rebuilding its blue-water fleet and facilities, and is consolidating and hardening its position in the post-Soviet states, South America, Cuba, the the "stans."
 

The background that this wide range of regional instabilities is playing out on is the precipitious economic and climatic conditions that are already adding significant food and energy instabilities, especially in poverty-striken densly populated third-world countries.

But interestingly enough, we may see some of the most serious social instability coming out of Europe, if the recent unrest in Greece, France, and Spain is any indication. The European banks failed harder and deeper than the American banks did in Oct '08, which is putting severe pressure on Europe, especially the Eastern European States.
 
It appears that Obama faces the spectre of war, food, energy, water, and economic instabilities breaking down both poor and rich nations around the world this year.

Independent of how Obama approaches these challenges, it is certain that he will face these challenges leading a country that has significantly less money, military power, diplomatic credibility, and resources than any president for the last 50 years.

But the system did something incredible with Obama. At the very point that our country had lost international credibility, when neither party offered anything but a different mix of the same old stuff, our system came together and put a black face of unlimited hope as the public face of the corporate fascist empire.

Independent of the system that produced him, or the challenges he faces, the only standard to measure this Administration is how Obama disposes of each of these crisis.  It will not be the promise of hope, but the actual use of presidential power that will indicate what change, if any, in the nature and use of American Power that we are going to see out of this administration.

 
Change on the Domestic  Front?
In terms of the Obama economic program and the economic "stimulus," we are seeing buisness as usual. Nothing at all has changed, except the guard.

The Democrats stimulus is nothing more than a vast earmark, being nothing more than a complete bailout of Regan's "Supply Side," top-down economic policies of the last 30 years.

If Obama was going to change our economic policy, and really stimulate our economy, he would have given working and middle-class Americans a two-year tax holiday. Instead, he is continuing the massive bailouts of the richest and biggest companies in our country.

The bill for this unwise subsidy will be born by the middle-class both when they are taxed to pay for these corporate giveaways, and when funding this massive debt inevitably sparks food and energy price inflation.

So far Obama's economic program is custom tailored to subsidize the biggest bribers of both political parties, and does virtually nothing but insult the average American. 
 
Obama on Torture/Kidnapping/Illegal Spying
 Obama has repudiated torture, repudiated the DOJ findings authorizing torture, and ordered Gitmo closedd. Bush said he stopped torture, had repudiated the DOJ findings, and was going to close Gitmo. So far both Bush and Obama have made almost exactly the same statements about each of these issues.

Ominiously, the Obama order prohibiting torture and secret imprisonment, and apparently by extension,  kidnapping, allows exceptions for the CIA. Bush did exactly the same thing, publically condemning torture, then approving secret findings that "granted" him the authority to torture.

(Conclusion added 4/15/09)