Phyllis Chesler Interviews Carol Gould

carol gould

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Can one still give Barack Obama the benefit of the Doubt?
Last uploaded : Saturday 30th Jul 2011 at 23:00
Contributed by : Carol Gould

 

The article below was published in December 2010. As the USA gets closer to default I reject claims by conservative commentators that the present crisis arises from the Obama adninistration's action or inaction. Though I will acknowledge that Franklin Roosevelt was a consummate politician who knew how to commandeer support from Republicans, which Obama seems unable to achieve, the mess in which the United States finds itself began with the Bush administration. When Bill Clinton left office the country was not in financial turmoil.

If Tea Party-affiliated Republicans push the USA into default, which at its worst could trigger global meltdown, they may achieve nothing but an own goal: the catastrophe will be blamed on them and Obama may be re-elected in a wave of hatred of the GOP. Obama could always invoke the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution that states the validity of the nation's debt 'shall not be quesitoned.'

To quote Cliff Wilson :'Republicans say if the President enforces the 14th Amendment they'll impeach him. Andrew jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman didn't worry about impeachment. they concerned themselves with preserving, protecting and defending the constitution. Now it's Barack Obama's turn to step up to the plate and preserve the consitution and the Union.'
If the USA avoids default and the Obama administration can somehow pull the country back from the brink he could also succeed in 2012.
Obama needs some 'FDR luck.' Watch this space.
Link to Cliff's Notes:
http://wilsonsnotes.blogspot.com/2011/07/preserve-protect-and-defend-invoke-14th.html .
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First published December 01, 2010:
by Carol Gould
London

I have had it up to the eye teeth with correspondents writing in hysterical tones to me about ‘Obama bin Laden’ and 'Hussein'threatening the very existence of world Jewry and of Israel.

Had my native country, the United States of America, had a Jewish president who travelled to Israel and shmoozed the leadership time and again and had 'Israel' as his middle name the Jewish community would be outraged if headlines emerged about the US president 'pandering to the Jewish World.'

We journalists must not give in to the ugly and wrong use of 'Obama bin Laden,' which is the common parlance of the followers of extreme right-wing American media stars Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. (Yes, that's me talking -- the former neo con! )The American Right who in November voted in the Tea Party candidates is believed by some to be possessed of a tinge of racism; there is also a belief in Washington that Gen McChrystal's mocking of Obama's Cabinet in 'Rolling Stone' magazine earlier this year was to do with the fact that the Obama team was ‘all Jews.’ Do not underestimate for one moment that the extreme, Obama-hating Right is also devoid of Jews and has been suspected of having a small but significant and loud ex-KKK black-hating element. Why the worldwide Jewish community seems to want to ally itself with the Obama-hating Right is making my civil rights-championing mother revolve in her grave.

I have never quite understood why British and overseas people always spend so much time trashing my country's leaders. (Israeli commentator Caroline Glick's uncalled-for condemnation of Obama and of the long-overdue American universal health care is a recent example.) Americans admired in equal measure Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair despite their manifold faults and blunders, but when Bush was president we expats never heard the end of it -- including Piers Morgan's obscene anti-American Daily Mirror tableau on July 4th, 2002, the first Independence Day after 9/11, and now it is the turn of Obama to be hated by the same nation. If it isn't left-wing Johann Hari of 'The Independent' trashing Obama for NOT shmoozing the Palestinians, it is the Jewish press trashing him for 'pandering' to the Muslims.

On the Christian-led 'Vision to America' website throughout November bloggers remarked on Obama's trip to India with comments like 'Wouldn't it be a lot less expensive just to shoot him?' and others wished the tunnel in which he was purported to have travelled to Gandhi's birthplace would experience some sort of calamity.

People who hate him, regrettably many amongst my Jewish circle, are in paroxysms of rage about his trip to the largest Muslim connurbation in the world. His life in Indonesia meant a great deal to him. Were I a Christian who had had an early childhood period in a cheder (Hebrew school) in Israel or the USA I would also have a deep and abiding feeling about my Jewish experience. The American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton was educated in a cheder (Hebrew School) in the West Indies. He spoke and wrote fluent Hebrew but spent his adult life as a practicing Christian; would the Jewish community like it if there were disparaging articles written by historians and journalists about his 'pandering to the Jews' because he spent his childhood in a Jewish environment? That Barack Obama wishes to visit his boyhood home is not 'pandering to the Muslims.'

Obama has transformed the lives of several of my family members as well as two high school and college friends of mine who lost their jobs and who now CAN EAT, buy a pair of shoes or winter coat, get hospital care and get their eyes refracted. This is due to the Obama Stimulus Plan and to Obamacare. A relative's letter about the rise in her senior care was personally signed by President Obama. He has literally transformed her life in a short eighteen months.

Not one person in Israel or the USA has died because of Obama's actions. The al Aqsa Intifadah, 9/11, Bali, Madrid and 7/7 happened under GW Bush's watch. Numerous terror plots have been foiled since Obama took office.
I could go on and on. He and his beautiful family and mostly-Jewish cabinet make me burst with pride to be an American whose parents worked tirelessly for the civil rights movement.

Obama is a dream come true. He needs to try harder but has the potential to be another FDR. I have followed his remarkable career since 2002 and wrote about him in my 2004 London play, 'A Room at Camp Pickett,' examining segregation in the armed forces.

I was a staunch Bush-lovin' conservative myself but I joined with President Eisenhower's granddaughter Susan and President Nixon's daughter Julie in 2008 to support Republicans for Obama. It is notable that the powerful Zionist commentator Alan Dershowitz also supported him. Having seen how he, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are trying to bring compassion and generosity to America's unemployed, sick, homeless and poor of all social classes, religions and races -- amongst whom are some of my own friends and family -- I continue to applaud him.
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An example of Obama-bashing:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/253222/obama-knocks-israel-budding-sharia-state-andrew-c-mccarthy .



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