<--- President Barack Obama during a news conference about debt ceiling negotiations, July 29, 2011. (Photo: Philip Scott Andrews / The New York Times)

A President in Reverse
Tuesday 2 August 2011
by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

The United States of America is different today, different in a fundamental and dramatic way, and is a better place now only for a few thousand people who are rich enough to remain above the effect of this transformation. For the rest of us, the 99% who stay up nights worrying about health care bills, retirement, finding a job, keeping a job, and aging parents who now dangle above a deliberately frayed safety net, it is a colder and more dangerous country we call home.

If I hear one more person try to tell me the deal cut between Congress and the White House was as good as we can expect, that it isn't all bad, I might vomit on them. This whole thing has been a disaster, and no amount of spin can alter the fact. Mr. Obama has taken to the habit of abject retreat with such gusto that he should be outfitted with one of those beeping devices they put on trucks to alert people when they go in reverse. At least that way, we will have some warning the next time this Democratic president backs away from the very policies and priorities he was elected to protect and defend.

We sure could have used such a signal during this debt-fight calamity.

I want a clean debt bill. Beep-beep-beep, never mind.

(Read On)