Some classic Greenwald cynicism:
UPDATE: White House spokesman Jay Carney previewed President Obama’s State of the Union speech tonight as follows: “The State of the Union will be . . . about the central mission that we have as a country and his focus as president: Building a country and an economy where we reward hard work and responsibility, where everyone does their fair share, and where everyone is held accountable for what they do.” I find it hard to believe that they don’t cynically cackle in private when they come up with these things.
An image which is, admittedly, not too difficult to imagine. As far as reality goes, hard work is taxed more than profiting from ownership (income taxes vs. capital gains taxes). Those are the dominant modern American values, apparently.
The difference between me and Greenwald is that unfortunately I get seduced by talk like this. I evaluate politicians I like by what they say, and politicians I don’t like by what they do. So I say to myself, “Why, Mr. Obama, that’s exactly the kind of country I want too!”
One Comment
Two comments:
1) Greenwald is mainly referring to Obama’s “Look Forward, Not Backward” stance with respect to accountability for war crimes like torture, of which there has been very little.
2) Greenwald has previously written about how the Obama Administration went out of their way to pressure Schneiderman to reach hasty prosecution-free settlements with the banks (http://www.salon.com/2011/08/22/banks_10/). Of course, that was before Occupy Wall Street and the redirection of Wall Street campaign contributions to Mitt Romney. Now that he has less to lose and more to gain, we get this. Nothing to do with principle, everything to do with politics.