Correction: Presidential Pardon Only Available For Federal Crimes

But Obama's silence still a profile in cowardice.

Obama Silent While Georgia Murders Troy Davis

The State of Georgia, after imprisoning him for a quarter century under a death sentence, has pulled the trigger and murdered Troy Davis, an obviously innocent man. (His innocence was so obvious that establishment grandees like former President Jimmy Carter, former FBI secret police boss William Sessions, and former arch-reactionary Congressman Bob Barr had taken up Davis’ cause.) The word “murder” is the correct word, because murder is morally wrongful killing.

Not satisfied with murdering an innocent man, the State tried to hold him incommunicado, blocking media contacts with him, and cruelly denying him physical contact with his own family. Shamefully, the current local DA is a black man, yet this modern day Stepin Fetchit bent over backwards to display his fealty to the white racist establishment by pushing all-out for the execution, opposing his appeals and even clemency by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Ironically, the actual killer is a black criminal. You’d think the Georgians could have satisfied their racist lust for blood revenge for the killing of an off-duty white cop by punishing the actual culprit. But apparently even a quarter century later, they’re too proud to admit to incompetence (or worse, venality).

The original frame-up proceeded in the usual manner, with police coercing and threatening “witnesses” to sing their assigned solos at the “trial.” Seven of them subsequently recanted, at least one driven out of the state by the ensuing threats and intimidation. One of the other two is the actual killer.

I hope nobody is surprised by the denouement of this case. I knew all along he’d be put to death, from my knowledge and experience of living in America and viewing it objectively. And after all, the GOP framed up a former Democratic Governor, Singleton, in a high-speed, blatant railroad, and he was imprisoned, and despite establishment poohbahs taking up his cause, nothing came of that. Not freed, not exonerated- much less the frame-up culprits prosecuted or even losing position or status or, most critically, POWER. Fundamentally,  it all comes down to that, power.

Even Leftists don’t mention it, nor Davis’ family, Obama could have spoken out about Troy Davis' case.  But he’d rather avoid offending white racists. After all, what’s more important, saving an innocent man’s life, or his own reelection? (Obama had one of his mouthpieces trot out the lame excuse that he can’t meddle in a state matter, which of course doesn't stop him from using the bully pulpit of the Presidency to speak out on the issue.

Remember, Obama has bent over backwards to NOT do ANYTHING to help black people in general or in particular. Note how he handled the outrageous false arrest in his own home of Henry Louis Gates, a Harvard professor, two years ago:  “Let’s have a beer, all be friends, and put this behind us!” he postured, with a phony photo-op sitting with the cop and Gates with beers. After initially calling the arrest “stupid” (a pretty mild critique), white racist and reactionary ire prompted him to immediately do a yellow-bellied retreat. 

Consistently, Obama appeases the very worst political elements in America, while treating the progressive, decent ones with the back of his hand and ordering his minions to mete out abuse to them. Notice how fast Van Jones got canned because Murdoch’s minions went after him. (What do Republicans do when one of their allies is under attack? They counterattack.) Shirley Sherrod was axed as soon as some libeling blogger did a hatchet job on her. And remember ACORN?  They registered voters for the Democrats, and their reward was being thrown overboard.  Can’t imagine the GOP doing that to an ally.

The Insufferable Dominique Strauss-Kahn “Tells His Side of the Story.”

That’s how the bend-over-backwards-to-be-“fair” to rich scum corporate oligarchical media puts it.

As if reality is entirely subjective and relative, that “two sides to every story” bullshit. (But when someone, some group, or some nation is deemed to be their enemy and thus a hate-object, suddenly there aren’t two sides anymore. There’s just relentless demonization, and anyone who even points out inaccuracies, or injustices BY the U.S. or “the west” against the hate object, is silenced by being shouted down and slandered as being “pro” the hate object. For example, former Marine Major who said Saddam Hussein didn’t have “weapons of mass destruction” was smeared as an agent of Hussein. And Sean Penn was slimed by Murdoch’s minions as being pro-Saddam merely for going to Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion.)

Anyway, unfortunately we were treated to this ruling class lout appearing on French TV to do damage control and make himself into an object of undeserved sympathy. (In a sign that France is not totally hopeless, there were protesters outside the TV studio.) 

Strauss-Kahn unwittingly revealed once again his monumental arrogance when he said of his aborted Presidential run, “I wanted to be a candidate. I thought I could be useful. All that is behind me.” [I doubt it.]

Note the faux modesty. He didn’t want to be President to satisfy his hunger for power and self-aggrandizement. He just wanted to be useful. He was doing France a favor, you see.

What an ass.

Then of course there was the modified limited carefully crafted “admission” about his sexual assault of the hotel housekeeper in New York. Turns out it was just an innocent, consensual sexual romp. (You know how eager these African housekeepers are to give blowjobs to total strangers at the drop of a hat! It’s that hot jungle blood!) The interviewer didn’t mention the fact that video captured Strauss-Kahn with an apparent call girl the evening before his attack on housekeeper Nafissatou Diallo. The police said he had sex with that unidentified woman. He’s Mr. Fling-a-Night, I guess.

I wonder how many hours of cajoling and jawboning it took his PR handlers to get him to swallow enough of his overweening pride to agree to ‘fess up to “an error” and “a moral failure,” the “moral failure” presumably being promiscuity. You can be sure he doesn’t believe that second one for an instant. An arrogant SOB like that is literally incapable of believing that he’s ever done anything morally wrong in his life. He may have made pragmatic mistakes, he concedes to himself, as obviously happened this time. But never moral ones. He is incapable of guilt or shame or remorse. 

And his billionaire bitch wife, who apparently takes pride in being married to this aggressive satyr who can’t stop rutting, enables this attitude.

Just to balance things out, he took the opportunity to slime another of his victims, Tristane Banon, calling her allegations “imaginary and slanderous.” No pal, you’re the slanderer. And sexual predator.

He vented his rage at his New York victim, claiming he may have been set up. As an alternative motive, he branded her a golddigger. He also shared with us his considered opinion that the role of money in the U.S. legal system was “shocking.” Presumably he didn’t mean that poor people don’t get adequate defenses, while rich swells like him can buy their way out of virtually any jam, but that it cost [his wife] a lot more than buying his way out of trouble in the superior nation of France would cost- if he ever even gets arrested and charged for anything in the land of superior civilization, where sexual assault is accepted as natural. 

Strauss-Kahn revealed the stereotypical mindset of the French ruling class with the statement that the assault (called a “liaison” by the NY Times- great word choice! Is that supposed to be “objective”? “Neutral”?) “was not only an inappropriate relationship, but more than that, it was an error.” As in “it was worse than a crime, it was an error,” that classic all-knowing pseudo-worldly formulation of the French elite.

He also speculated that the hotel housekeeper in NY was part of a plot to set him up. Cute, pal. And he had the nerve to say that his assault- which, to repeat, he insisted was somehow consensual- was “a failing vis-à-vis the French people, who had vested their hopes for change in me.” If they really did that, they are monumental fools. But note once again the monumental conceit of the man, like he’s some savior on a white horse riding to the rescue of France. What a loathsome creature. Even the pool photo is perfectly revealing: he has a classic arrogant Gallic sneer on his face, supercilious to the nth degree.

A creature like Strauss-Kahn believes he is superior to almost every other person on the planet. First, he’s rich. Second, he belongs to a ruling elite. Third, he’s French. Fourth, he’s a French male, automatically making him superior to all females on the planet, bar none. And being a Frenchman of his class, he believes that makes him superior to anyone who isn’t French. And finally, many Jews believe in their superiority as “God’s Chosen People,^TM” and he’s Jewish, so who knows?

He really was perfect as IMF chieftain. The job of the IMF is to stick it royally to billions of us inferior peons around the globe so the superrich can get hyperrich. His attitude of contemptuous superior is perfect for that gig. And feeling that human beings only exist as instruments to be used for his and his ilk’s self-interest is necessary in order to be ruthless about causing pain and suffering to others without feeling; economic, psychological, and sexual pain.