Obama's Carnival of Beasts Continues

"The politics of common ground will not be found on the far right or on the far left. That is not where most Americans live. We will only find it in the firm middle ground of common sense and shared values."
--Barack Obama, approvingly quoting Tom Daschle (11 Dec., 2008)

As Obama now speaks approvingly of the vile triangulation tactics pioneered during the Clinton regime, his carnival of beasts continues. One right-wing pick after another. A few liberals have turned up among them, but they're being given token roles of little real importance. All the big slots are going to the conservatives--after running on "change," Obama has assembled a team that runs the ideological gamut from A to B, from Republican-lite to Republican-outright. It has been a dreadful thing to behold.

His just-announced choice to deliver a benediction at his inauguration is "Pastor" Rick Warren, a reactionary scumbag of the Religious Reich variety who compares legalized abortion to the Holocaust and compares homosexual marriage to incest and pedophilia. This election season, Warren crusaded in favor of California's noxious Prop. 8, which stripped away such marriage rights to gay couples. This is one of the first voices Americans will hear from this administration when Obama is sworn in.

Getting to offer a benediction at an inauguration is a relatively minor thing, of course. Symbolically, though, it's an atrocity, particularly after the last 8 years, and an open insult to every decent, liberal American, after Obama has already dished out to them one insult after another via his choices to run his administration. Whatever his other shortcomings, Obama has always given the impression of being quite intelligent. His choices since election, however, give the impression of a degree of stupidity bordering on the cretinous. What is to be gained by giving a creature like Warren such a prominent national stage? It can only give him greater prestige and that is to the detriment of the United States and everyone in it. The only point seems to be a vain, stupid, doomed effort to curry favor with the right.

After they politically bury him, perhaps they'll send him some flowers.

--classicliberal2