Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
As someone who voted for and rejoiced in Barack Obama’s election in 2008, I had certain expectations for his Presidency. My expectations heightened with the Democratic party’s majorities in Congress. Foremost I wanted to see a swift end to both wars, which I believe are unjust and draining the resources of this country. Since Obama was presumably a constitutional law scholar, I expected that he would return this country to the Rule of Law. I expected the new President to eliminate the Bush constitutional usurpation of our government and people, occurring with Democratic Party compliance. The Administration would end the widespread use of torture, rendition, and the excesses of The Patriot Act. His Department Of Justice would prosecute those who were responsible. As far as the economic crisis engendered by Wall Street excesses, I had faith that he would deal with it through FDR like projects, by re-regulation/prosecution of the financial industry and ending the unjustified Bush Tax cuts for the wealthy.
That none of this has happened, or was even attempted has filled me with disappointment and anger towards this Administration’s performance. In my mind as I tried to make sense of it of this betrayal, there was a nagging suspicion. What if the “powers that be” in our Country including the Military-Industrial complex had sent the word to the newly elected President: “Play ball”, or find yourself and your family grievously threatened? I was a young adult through the 60’s as I watched the assassinations of my heroes, one of whom was a President. I’m not comfortable with the official explanation of these deaths, since there was much that didn’t make sense. In the 70’s The Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and later the Church Committee Report on the CIA gave credence to the possible actions of a secret government. In addition, we learned from General Smedley-Butler, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler that a group of businessmen had contacted him in 1934 about leading a coup against FDR. One of those conspirators was Prescott Bush, father of Bush I and grandfather of Bush II. Later, Prescott Bush was involved in a Bank that had financed the NAZI’s rise to power. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar.
On September 7th, Rob Kall’s OpEdNews published “Obama Team Feared Coup If He Prosecuted War Crimes”. Andrew Kreig, executive director of the Justice Integrity Project, wrote this article. There are some very persuasive points in it and I believe it is worth your perusal and comment:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Obama-Team-Feared-Coup-If-by-Andrew-Kreig-110907-156.html
If this speculation were true, it would go a long way towards explaining what we’ve been seeing from the Obama Administration. It would also be a disaster for any notion of the Rule of Law.
This Administration has performed timidly in areas promised by their campaign and enumerated above. Their performance on even something like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was timid and drawn out compared to the President’s campaign promises and its’ eventual resolution was a tortured process, to say the least. The easiest explanation of course is a timid Presidency and that as smart as he is, Barack Obama lacks the ability to lead with strength. This is indeed the simplest solution and “behind the scenes” threats are not needed to offer further explanation. However, I must admit that doesn’t fully satisfy me. Any man who runs for President is essentially audaciously self-confident. Who in hell would really want such a 24/7 high tension job, except for people who so believe in themselves that they are willing to go through the torture of a Presidential Campaign to get there? The “audaciousness of hope” had to possess some strong power behind it in the man out front.
Please understand that I am not yet willing to believe absolutely that our Government is so completely in the hands of a centralized power that our elected officials mean nothing. While having seen much in life that stimulates my cynical nature, I remain an optimist as a matter of mental health. The hubris needed to propound and continue such an ongoing plot would be massive. The logistics are enormous in terms of maintaining secrecy. I know too much of human fallibility to fully believe this could be executed completely, without consequence or rumor, yet there are those many strange assassinations to ponder.
Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of America’s 9/11 tragedy. Our reaction to it as a country in that decade makes me feel at times that Al Qaeda triumphed by swerving our country away from its’ ideals and constitution. What then if this speculation is true and certain people with power have used the fear engendered to resort to illegal pressure upon our President? What can we do about it?
My own belief is that without ignoring it, we must proceed as if it isn’t true and to continue to fight for the ideals and Constitution we hold sacred. I believe that violent revolution never works and only begets new tyrants. However, revolutions don’t have to be violent to succeed, as Gandhi showed us and as Reverend King proved. Revolution can be as simple as a majority of the people refusing to buy into the mythology tyranny presents to maintain control over us. Tyranny needs acceptance of its faulty premises and fear via intimidation to work its will. Educating most people in what is occurring and how they are deceived represents a powerful force. Professor Turley in his legal Career has consistently fought against evils like torture and against the extra-constitutional actions of chief executives and legislators. These legal battles are an example of fighting back and are educational as well. I will never accept that the battle is over and that we have become a feudal, corporate-controlled country. However, I fully realize that my own proffered solutions are more hopeful than concrete
What do you, the reader, think about this news story? Do you find it credible? If it is creditable, what do you propose we can or should do about it?
Submitted by: Mike Spindell
pronounced kooers.
we have the birthers, the truthers and now the coupers. A trifecta of conspiracy and political legerdemain.
Which one will be proven correct?
We may not see a coup in the traditional sense of the word, but it would be naive to dismiss, out of hand, the possibility of a silent coup, in my opinion. If it happens, it won’t be an overnight occurrence and it may not even be obvious to most, but “step out of line”… and the state’s goons and thugs will step in to work their magic…
To think that it couldn’t happen here is foolhardy. These are dangerous times and those who believe otherwise are either fools or errand-boys.
Yes, how dare Michael Moore enjoy the money he has made exposing the lies & hypocrisy that drive modern America? If he were really a true believer he would set fire to all that cash & like in a mud hut in the moldering remains of Flint, MI
Michael Moore is a flake/fake with a camera and a big soap box. He spouts proletarian hyperbole while living a lavish bourgeois life style.
Mike,,, Great piece….so scary, so reasonable. This really makes much more sense than the stuff that’s been roaming around in my mind the past couple of years…
“Still: Shame on you Mike.”
“And there’s no way on God’s Green Earth that the Pentagon would try to overthrow an elected president in this country. People have been watching “Seven Days in May” too much.”
Chad,
I don’t know how old you are, but as I said in my post I remember indelibly the President of the US, his brother a Senator who would have been President and a great leader of the Civil Rights movement gunned down improbably. There were more than 50,000 deaths of our troops in Viet Nam, hundreds of thousands irreparably injured and perhaps a million Vietnamese killed, for what?
Well from a particular foreign policy perspective, shared by both our Armed Services Leaders and the “Wise Old Men” of foreign policy, people had to die in that silly war so that we could “stand up to the Russians.”
They believed anyone who disagreed was a traitor to the country and they apparently weren’t happy with JFK’s tepid support of the war and the opposition of RFK and MLK. Given those times they might well have seen assassination as a patriotic act.
As far as the President goes, I have clearly stated here on other threads that I will probably be forced to vote for him, given the alternatives. However, I’m extremely unhappy with his performance and his “turnaround” in many areas does arouse my suspicions. The mistake of “American Exceptionalism”, is a 7,000 year history replete with far crazier things happening to Nation’s leaders, many time with the leadership of a given country’s military, which is ignored by those thinking that laws or principles alone govern human behavior. The way things have gone on in our country’s history, as much as I love and feel a part of it, are not so easy to dismiss by merely saying it can’t happen here.
Michael Moore offers a glimpse of what’s taking place in America. The things of which he speaks are happening to rather ordinary Americans, as well, but most are without the resources to hire a team of ex-Navy Seals for protection.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/07/michael-moore-hated-man-america
Excerpt:
For more than a year there had been threats, intimidation, harassment and even assaults in broad daylight.
…
Bombarded with hatred
When we got back to our home in northern Michigan, the local beautification committee had dumped three truckloads of horse manure waist-high in our driveway so that we wouldn’t be able to enter our property – a property which, by the way, was freshly decorated with a dozen or so signs nailed to our trees: GET OUT! MOVE TO CUBA! COMMIE SCUM! TRAITOR! LEAVE NOW OR ELSE!
I had no intention of leaving.
The hate mail after the Oscar speech was so voluminous, it almost seemed as if Hallmark had opened a new division where greeting card writers were assigned the task of penning odes to my passing. (“For a Special Motherfucker …” “Get Well Soon from Your Mysterious Car Accident!” “Here’s to a Happy Stroke!”)
The phone calls to my house were actually creepier. It’s a whole different fright machine when a human voice is attached to the madness and you think: “This person literally risked arrest to say this over a phone line!” You had to admire the balls – or insanity – of that.
But the worst moments were when people came on to our property. These individuals would just walk down the driveway, always looking like rejects from the cast of Night of the Living Dead, never moving very fast, but always advancing with singleminded purposefulness. Few were actual haters; most were just crazy. We kept the sheriff’s deputies busy until they finally suggested we might want to get our own security, or perhaps our own police force. Which we did.
We met with the head of the top security agency in the country, an elite outfit that did not hire ex-cops, nor any “tough guys” or bouncer-types. They preferred to use only Navy Seals and other ex–Special Forces. Guys who had a cool head and who could take you out with a piece of dental floss in a matter of nanoseconds. By the end of the year, due to the alarming increase of threats and attempts on me, I had nine ex-Seals surrounding me, round-the-clock. (end excerpt)
Not nonsense. That is a Republican talking point. If you guys remember, a few days ago, I linked to a story by investigative reporter Roger Shuler. Like all decent reporters, he has sources that most of us do not have, although he cites the same stuff Mike used. I read his stuff regularly, and he has a good history of credible reporting. He has made it more or less his hobby to go after the corrupt DoJ cases prosecuted under Karl Rove’s guidance.
Link to Roger’s story in his blog, The Legal Schnauzer:
http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2011/09/obama-advisors-feared-coup-if.html
Chad S 1, September 10, 2011 at 1:26 pm
@anon nurse:
Where is even a single shred of proof that The White House feared a Coup?
This is a joke, and this blog should be ashamed for spreading this nonsense.
———————————–
Chad S,
No, this is anything but “a joke”… and the truth will out. While I’m old enough that I may not live to see it, I’m quite comfortable that the whole of it will come to the fore eventually. The “possibilities” about which Mike S. has written aren’t even close to nonsense. The whole story, while admittedly “stranger than fiction”, is working it’s way to the top… Slowly. Surely. Count on it.
This blog presents a wonderful forum for the exchange of information and ideas, and I can tell you, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Mike is on the right track. Again… count on it.
The only point I missed was being called white….I think everything else is self explanatory….I don’t think Obama is doing the Job he promised to do. I would like to have the ability to have someone else run in his place…that ain’t gonna happen so I have to look outside the box…..When I did that the only viable options are the lesser of two evils…It only leaves you with a GOP field….Therefore I am a Republican, Woman hater to be viewed with askance….Don’t think I missed that….Now if you want to apologize….I am willing to listen….Other than that….I seem to think you used the term askance….so you need to define what you meant by it…I supplied what I think was the Merriam-Webster definition….Which is a generally accepted as a good source….used to use it when Black’s Law was lacking…. even cited it in a few appeals so I think it the source of the definition is pretty good…..
Sounds like a Bill Hicks routine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MRykTpw1RQ
Warning: Contains Foul Language
eniobob,
LOL, Thank you….
Chad S:
I am pretty sure you are correct.
Roco: torture is being prosecuted. The DOJ assigned an AUSA to investigated several cases involving the CIA.
And there’s no way on God’s Green Earth that the Pentagon would try to overthrow an elected president in this country. People have been watching “Seven Days in May” too much.
by the way, if you simply google ‘coup d’etat’ you will find a plethora of conversations, according to NPR;
-August 17, 2008
Think of a coup d’etat and images of a far-flung banana republic likely come to mind. So it might come as a surprise that it happened here in the United States — just once, in 1898.
out of an article by Global Research;
‘Legal procedures for canceling/rescheduling the elections are under study, at the request of DHS Secretary Tom Ridge, by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which is examining the legal and constitutional implications. (Washington Post, 14 July, 2004)
The Military and Intelligence apparatus working in liaison with Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) are indelibly behind this process, pointing to the unthinkable: the possibility of a Coup d’Etat in America. ‘
Harpers Magazine fronted an article titled;
‘American coup d’etat:
Military thinkers discuss the unthinkable, ‘ in 2006
then there is, amongst the 28,600,000 hits,
An American Coup d’État? whatreallyhappened site;
An attempted coup d’etat censored out of our history books, courtesy of corporate America, but not … from traveling more than 200 miles from the U.S. coastline. …
The Stealth Coup D’Etat: U.S.A. 2008-2010
http://www.businessinsider site;
Oct 28, 2010 – The Stealth Coup D’Etat in the U.S. (called “The Quiet Coup” by Simon Johnson) was begun long ago, but the takeover reached fruition in the …
Part IV: The Financial Coup d’Etat — The Economic Elite Vs. The …
ampedstatus article;
Feb 21, 2010 – Part IV: The Financial Coup d’Etat — Economic Elite Vs. The Although most of the Economic Elite live and operate inside the US, they are not …
An American Coup D’état – First World Nation Style | ZeroHedgewww.zerohedge Blogs › Cognitive Dissonance’s blog
Nov 9, 2010 – An American Coup D’état – First World Nation Style Some say all this insanity is just greed and corruption run amuck. Others claim the political, …
come to the dark side, Chad, …. oh, maybe denial is the dark side…oh, maybe not…
Anonymously Yours:
I feel you!
You missed my point.
Chad S:
the intel/military sphere would clearly be upset. But I doubt many professional officers would go along with a coup. It is a real slam at the professional officer corps in this country to even suggest it would/might have undertaken a coup.
Although they clearly take an oath to the Constitution so maybe they should have when Obama didnt prosecute the war crimes done under the Bush Administration.
I am really confused now, according to everyone on this website, Obama should have prosecuted war crimes and to not do so was to shred the Constitution. Military officers take an oath to defend the Constitution so didnt they violate their oath by not removing Obama for not prosecuting war crimes?
Seems to me they are in a conspiracy with Obama to let him shred the Constitution.
Seems like a case of having your cake and eating it.
No Comparison hell….The Government is being dismantled under Obama……
He signed the bill that allowed fewer employer/employee deductions for the future future funding of what is presently called SS….That is an abomination…..At least Bush as sick as he was was honest about wanting to get rid of it….