BWB

http://cryptogon.com/?p=11714

I have seen this image before; divorced from its origins, inserted in the threads of a blog comment section elsewhere. I wondered where it came from. I wonder where The New Statesman got it.
I don’t like this image. Although the premise of the article is, at this point, neither new, nor inaccurate, the image obscures more than it reveals. It isn’t that Obama has “morphed” into Bush43. It’s that despite the appearances of two dominant political parties, there is really just one party with two subsidiaries; the party of Inc.
I would argue that, while Obama is the individual catching the hostility at the moment, there exists a growing awareness that there is deep rot in our political system. Small government, fiscally conservative Republicans had ample cause to become disillusioned with Bush43. And, for honest conservatives there was ample hostility for Bush43 by the end of his term. Liberal Democrats are finding equal cause to be disillusioned with Obama. The people who are not disillusioned are those people who either have always agreed, or have come to recognize, that our government serves its corporate overlords.
It is increasingly evident that with the DNC and RNC managing the selection of candidates from among which voters get to choose, and the campaign financing of the same, corporate America has a convenient port of trade by which to access and influence the two dominant parties. It couldn’t be more efficiently organized if the corporations had established the transmission mechanism themselves.
If the image has merit, it lies in the portrayal of the seamless transition of real power from Bush43-R to Obama-D. That power may be appear to be political, but its essence is economic, and represents the expressed wishes of the party of Inc.

Yes. I would add this.

I am so sick of this I could scream.
The left is busy making itself irrelevant. We elect a brilliant young progressive president and we don’t have the maturity to support him so he can move this country forward with the things we want done.
And he’s getting it done and all the left does is complain and tear Obama down constantly.
Way to ruin what we worked so hard for. The left needs to grow the hell up.

Agreed, Tena. There is a distinct difference between dissent, discussion and immature ranting. He is getting it done, against all odds. I’m with you.

Bush, Sr. knew when NOT to invade. And, the content of this event was to emphasize his Points of Light foundation. This doesn’t mean that Obama is becoming, or morphing into Bush-ness. It simply means he does not limit himself in the world. When someone, anyone, is doing something good and positive and strong, he will support them. He has the maturity to not agree and partner with them on everything else they are doing. This is the very essence of maturity. This photograph is the very essence of ignorance, and its spread throughout the online media.

oMG! What Tena said…..

..I am so sick of this I could scream.
…
The left needs to grow the hell up.

Exactly as I’ve said thousands of times.
Like kids in a candy store who were mostly denied their OPiuM fixes for 8 years (except for that GWB gave far too many condescendiments, such as the new Medicare Part D prescription benefit entitlement; No Child Left Behind; over 2 Trillion in new domestic spending programs; oh, and he even tried to pull off that Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants thing too) Progressive Leftists have grabbed a sack and are demanding things that this financially broken nation just can’t afford. President Obama now knows this; you blog proggs aren’t invited in to know just how bad off we really are, and how close to third-world status we are skating. Nevermind that, though, you live in your childish I WANT IT NOW!!! mentalities.
Grow up, Proggs, and appreciate what you have before it’s gone forever.

The far right notwithstanding, Obamhostility seems to be ratcheting up on the left.

Question for the Bag:
Was this an appropriate comparison? The “far right” hostility you reference is a domestic phenomenon. New Statesman is a British left-wing publication. The morphing of photos of Bush and Obama is visually striking and might even accurately express the sentiment of many frustrated progressives in the U.S., however the left in this country is not joined at the hip with the left in the rest of the world. Would it not have been better to use an image/article that originated in the U.S.?

Read the article that accompanies the photo- and you will most definitely scream. Obama has done his best to impede investigation of George W and his minions, has actually voted to protect and increase domestic spying, made backdoor deals with the pharmaceutical companies and has yet to fully outlaw rendition.
It’s time to put away the warm, fuzzy savior image we’ve created and desperately cling to. Growing up means facing the cold, hard fact that this system allows us only two sides of the same coin- and when someone actually challenges that beyond mere rhetoric, he gets to join that very exclusive club made so prominent back in the sixties.

Fair enough.

Critical questions closer to home may be found in David Swanson’s
Presidential Power Grows : Will You Love Every Future President?
http://tomdispatch.com

actually, Bag, his ears did stay. (compare the morphed pic to BHO’s official presidential shot, and you can see that its likely that they actually took his ears from that shot for the composite). but the ears are less prominent b/c the hair sticks out more. looking at the pictures in comparison (both GWB & BHO’s official presidental shots), what i see is that GWB’s hair (shape, type & fact that its greying), nose, laugh lines, & reddish cheeks, chin are added to BHO’s eyes, lips & ears. brow wrinkles are added that don’t seem to come from either one. the eyebrows are lightened, but not quite to the extent of GWB’s, and the skin color is in between, but honestly, with the hair, makes him look more Indian (the country, not Native American) than black or white. i wonder about the choice of which features to pull from GWB– taking away BHO’s eyes & lips would make one think it was a pic of GWB more than BHO. yet somehow, it still appears as ‘BHO’ with GWB’s nose, which can be a prominent feature for caricatures. to me, the composite waters down things like the conviction, seriousness & intelligence which are more prominent in BHO’s original shot. the composite looks like he’s smiling at some inside joke, more smug and hidden.

Oh really? In some alternate version of history perhaps. The reality is a bit different because old George gave us a tattered Constitution, wars of Imperial conquest and a shattering debt that will never be repaid.
It’s all about priorities, War vs. Peace, Bread vs. Guns. And Obama has failed to scale down the Imperial hubris by following if not strengthening some of the most outrageous parts of the so called War on Terror while handing oversight of the predatory financial system to the very same predators that sank the economy in the first place.
That’s were the discontent is on the Left.

The difference between liberals and cannibals is cannibals do not eat their own–LBJ

I hope you can pay for for your “Peace” with something other than virtual “Bread”, Rafael.

as far as i can tell the “progressive leftists” at Goldman Sachs have grabbed a sack and are looting the country blind in the wake of a series of disastrous, pugilistic foreign policy decisions by neocons.
what planet are you on? seriously, the hypocrisy is jaw-dropping. you post on this blog every morning accusing “proggs” of drinking the obama kool-aid from your underwater bunker in the depths of the sea of conservative kool-aid. you back up your snark with no facts, no references– just anger.
the photo above speaks to me because after reading this i am completely disillusioned with obama as a representative for change.
but claiming that the country is broke because GWB spent too much on domestic programs?!!?! seriously? my mother is a teacher in the Oakland public schools. ‘no child left behind’ is an absolute travesty. i know this from firsthand experience. but it’s not the reason we’re broke.
it is impossible to take you seriously and that’s sad, because it means you will never have a meaningful dialogue with the readers or author of this blog. your anger is your undoing.

Did you read the article at the link?

ummm, Ok

WOW, Tena. the entire left is busy making itself irrelevent? We supported Obama, he became President and turned his back. Gitmo, Military commissions, torture, renditions, Drone kills in AFPAk, Iraq, Patriot Act, etc., etc.
Is he working on that and how mature do I need to be? What is he “getting done”? Bail outs, G20 Police State, chilling with a cop and a professor, did I miss anything?

Wow, thanks. I don’t understand why the “left” (I hate that term) supports Obama’s policies when they hated Bush for the same thing. I will watch them moan when Jeb Bush/Palin assume the whitehouse and the presidential authority. Hope they are as nice as the OBAMA.

liberals who cut clinton too much slack are overcompensating and making up for lost time.

he looks indonesian.

medicare part d ALONE left an unfunded liability of $8 trillion dollars. that’s T as in turkey. it’s debt carried over that reactionary teabaggers like you are blaming obama for creating.
i didn’t see you guys rioting when bush was spending like a drunken sailer and not paying a dime for any of his programs passed. not one thin dime. he was all borrow & spend, borrow & spend.

speaking of both sides, the article is only side of the story. you guys are belly aching before the dust has settled. growing up also means not insisting on immediate gratification.
the torture/rendition stuff is being processed:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/promise/175/end-the-use-of-torture/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/promise/176/end-the-use-of-extreme-rendition/
he’s a deliberate guy who studies and weighs things and thinks things through. isn’t that an improvement over having someone so clueless that he went by his gut without any consideration of consequence?

that’s too nuanced for mutantus’ new world order.

he gets to join that very exclusive club made so prominent back in the sixties.
is that something you’re wishing for?

We’ve moved so far to the right that liberals are being misidentified as progressives. Obama was and is a centrist.
This was all we were ever going to get from him. Tepid liberalism starving the republic to feed the empire. It’s like having a better deckchair on the Titanic.

Hardly, but he runs the risk no matter how many people he tries to please and placate- simply because of the color of his skin. So it’s increasingly important that he passes significant legislation ASAP… instead of stonewalling and impeding investigations and pushing watered down policies.

Same coin that pays for the wars. It’s not that the goverment doesn’t have any money, it is that it wastes it away on Empire. So your numbers are right, because like I said, you can’t have both. Empire will bankrupt the Republic.

No. GWB’s undoing was in giving in and spending too much money, period, on all sorts of unnecessary programs. Yes, the war effort in Iraq was ill-advised; since that’s over, I can say that without compromising any troops on the ground. GB 43 (and 41) left the ’smaller government, smaller spending’ model of Conservatism, and I complained mightily about that; but he did so just to shut up the Proggs and their never-ending demands for more and more and…more ‘free’ stuff. GW threw them a bone, as it were, just to get along. We see how that worked out for him, don’t we?
As bad as Bush’s spending decisions were, we’re now aligned (thanks, Dems!) to spend on a scale that makes Bush’s expenditures seem frugal.
As long as there’s ink in the treasury, we have money, right? As long as China and Saudi Arabia keep the dollar afloat and buy our debt, we can always create more debt, right? TANSTAFFL is a myth, right? Right?
As long as progressives dream of a world where everyone is happy and free, and work is optional, but health care is covered, Conservatives (real ones, not the George Bush – John McCain – Olympia Snowe sorts) will have to ’splain why that won’t work out for very long.
You can promise the world to the uneducated to win elections, but remember, they will expect results. So get busy, you’ve a lot of free gas to pump.

reminds me of bobby jindal – a little

Medicare D was a Big Pharma giveaway, not a condensation to the left. In fact, nothing on your list was a program which was remotely progressive. As for Obama, one word sums up true progressives problems: Geitner.

was and is a centrist.
can you refresh our memories and cite some past examples of centrism, please, before he was elected president.

This sounds about right. Even if you said this tongue in cheek, you hit very close to the heart of it.

the buck stops with obama.