A BOGUS SPEECH BY A BOGUS PRESIDENT

Yesterday, Obama spoke in New Orleans at the 10 year anniversary of Katrina. I'm not quite sure why we celebrate disasters' anniversaries, but it was a chance for Obama to take a victory lap and show how things had improved since the horrific tragedy. Katrina helped derail George W. Bush's presidency as we realized en masse that here was a man content to fly over the disaster in a private jet and claim that his unqualified FEMA head was doing a "heckuva job."

Soured on Bush, we sought the opposite in our next presidential election. Instead of a Texas oil man ready to start a war in any country with a redneck's "Don't fuck with us" attitude--even towards Iraq which never even fucked with us--we chose a totally different type of man as our next president. A mixed race guy from the Midwest who educated, charming and was one of the few who did not support the Iraq war. We thought he would take us in a totally different direction. And listening to Obama joke about getting grease stains on his suit after feasting on a New Orleans' incredible cuisine, I was reminded of the man I voted for and even donated money to.

Then Obama started talking about the jobs and opportunities that had been added as New Orleans had bounced back. And I recognized the man who Obama has become in office. Still handsome, still charming and still able to deliver a joke like no president I can remember. But Obama has proved that he has no interest in creating jobs. He is actively seeking to destroy jobs with the Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade deal written by corporate lobbyists governing 40% of the world's trade. It would lead to a frenzy of outsourcing of American jobs, as we'd be forced to compete with workforces in countries like Vietnam where the minimum wage is well under $1 an hour. The deal has been called "NAFTA on steroids", referring to the NAFTA trade deal which another Democrat Bill Clinton signed--killing 1 million good manufacturing jobs in this country. So you see, it isn't only the Republicans' failed policies like trickle down economics which fail the American people in their quest for prosperity. It's corporate Democrats like Obama who would rather destroy tons of jobs in order to do whatever the multi-national corporations have paid him to do. And they'd much rather use someone making less than $1 an hour than any greedy American demanding 8 times that amount. In fact, the narrative that we're fed by the media is that obstructionist Republicans in Congress have blocked all of Obama's good ideas. Not the TPP--Republicans overwhelmingly joined Obama on this rotten deal as members of the president's own party broke ranks with him and scratched their heads over how he could be so corrupt and the opposite of his public persona.

You probably won't have heard much about the TPP. Not only because it's secret, so Congressmen can't even take notes on it or make a copy and take that copy out of the room it sits in so that they could openly discuss it. Which is why Obama desperately put his efforts into fast-tracking the vote, meaning they vote on it with very little debate. Which raises the question: If the TPP were as good for American as Obama claims, why the secrecy? And you won't hear much about the TPP on the news, because our "liberal" news MSNBC is so busy being a cheering squad for even the awful stuff Obama is doing that they fired Ed Schultz, the one union-supporting anchor who dared to hold the president's feet to the fire on this issue. And say nightly: THIS DOES NOT JIVE WITH THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE YOU CLAIM YOU ARE, MR. PRESIDENT. And more establishment news channels all back the TPP, so he'll get no flack from them.

But Obama, like everyone who supports the TPP, is pulling a fast one. He knows we'd be horrified by what the TPP would mean for us in terms of job loss, in terms of giving big pharma drug monopolies and even diminishing the sovereignty of the country so that the US could be side by a corporation. Oh yes, your photo-op yesterday presented you as the first president of color who went down to New Orleans after a semblance of order had been restored after 10 years and ate some soul food. Yeah, that means you really care. Obama doesn't care about anyone who hasn't bribed him. Minorities hardest hit by the recession will be hardest hit by the jobs we'll lose if the TPP is passed. And guess what? Hillary Clinton, who called the TPP the "gold standard" of trade agreements a few years ago, is more of the same if not worse. Corporate democrats work for corporations, not the people. There is one presidential candidate who isn't even taking large donations and who is attracting larger crowds than even media magnet Donald Trump. But let's not talk about him. No, let's keep this cycle of politicians from both parties who represent greed and the 1% going unchallenged because it's easier to form an opinion about Caitlyn Jenner and anchor babies.