Chewing Gum and The American Dream

drawing  by marguerita

What do you promise people who have been told 

they can have anything they want, who are repeatedly congratulated for living in the best of all possible circumstances? 

How do you tell them "the good times,"

 as we have known them,

 are not coming back? 

To get richer than the next guy or necessarily to accumulate more and more stuff ,instead of to living  life more fully and engage more expansively the elemental possibilities of human existence. 

That is the essence of what so many now seem to yearn for in their lives. 

People--even successful and affluent people--are frustrated .

from William Greider's new book, Come Home, America.

 Copyright © 2009 by William Greider.

Obama:plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose,tralala

drawing collage by marguerita
Where’s the fight?

WASHINGTON — President Obama is well known for bold proposals that have raised expectations, but his administration has shown a tendency for compromise and caution,
and even a willingness to capitulate
on some early initiatives.
In some of his earliest skirmishes, Mr. Obama eventually chose pragmatism over fisticuffs. “If Obama is too timid, if the White House is too cautious,” said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian, “it is going to make him look too opportunistic.
He made all these promises during the campaign, he talked so boldly, he stirred all our hopes, and now he is not following through.”
“The thing we still don’t know about him is what he is willing to fight for,” said Leonard Burman, an economist at the Urban Institute and a Treasury Department official in the Clinton administration.
“The thing I worry about is that he likes giving good speeches, he likes the adulation and he likes to make people happy.”Washington Memo - Despite Major Plans, Obama Taking Softer Stands - NYTimes.com